Steig et al – falsified

Jeff Id of The Air Vent emailed me today inviting me to repost Ryan O’s latest work on statistical evaluation of the Steig et al “Antarctica is warming” paper ( Nature, Jan 22, 2009) I thought long and hard about the title, especially after reviewing the previous work from Ryan O we posted on WUWT where the paper was dealt a serious blow to “robustness”. After reading this latest statistical analysis, I think it is fair to conclude that the paper’s premise has been falsified.

Ryan O, in his conclusion, is a bit more gracious:

I am perfectly comfortable saying that Steig’s reconstruction is not a faithful representation of Antarctic temperatures over the past 50 years and that ours is closer to the mark.

Not only that, Ryan O did a more complete job of the reconstruction than Steig et al did, he mentions this in comments at The Air Vent:

Steig only used 42 stations to perform his reconstruction. I used 98, since I included AWS stations.

The AWS stations have their problems, such as periods of warmer temperatures due to being buried in snow, but even when using this data, Ryan O’s analysis still comes out with less warming than the original Steig et al paper

It is my view that all Steig and Michael Mann have done with their application of RegEm to the station data is to smear the temperature around much like an artist would smear red and white paint on a pallete board to get a new color “pink” and then paint the entire continent with it.

It is a lot like “spin art” you see at the county fair. For example, look (at left) at the different tiles of colored temperature results for Antarctica you can get using Steig’s and Mann’s methodology. The only thing that changes are the starting parameters, the data remains the same, while the RegEm program smears it around based on those starting parameters. In the Steig et al case, PC and regpar were chosen by the authors to be a value of 3. Chosing any different numbers yields an entirely different result.

So the premise of the Steig et al paper paper boils down to an arbitrary choice of values that “looked good”.

I hope that Ryan O will write a rebuttal letter to Nature, and/or publish a paper. It is the only way the Team will back down on this. – Anthony

UPDATE: To further clarify, Ryan O writes in comments:

“Overall, Antarctica has warmed from 1957-2006. There is no debating that point. (However, other than the Peninsula, the warming is not statistically significant. )

The important difference is the location of the warming and the magnitude of the warming. Steig’s paper has the warming concentrated on the Ross Ice Shelf – which would lead you to entirely different conclusions than having a minimum on the ice shelf. As far as magnitude goes, the warming for the continent is half of what was reported by Steig (0.12 vs. 0.06 Deg C/Decade).

Additionally, Steig shows whole-continent warming from 1967-2006; this analysis shows that most of the continent has cooled from 1967-2006. Given that the 1940’s were significantly warmer in the Antarctic than 1957 (the 1957-1960 period was unusually cold in the Antarctic), focusing on 1957 can give a somewhat slanted picture of the temperature trends in the continent.”

Ryan O adds later: “I should have said that all reconstructions yield a positive trend, though in most cases the trend for the continent is not statistically significant.”

Up until now all the work which has been done on the antarctic reconstruction has been done without statistical verification. We believed that they are better from correlation vs distance plots, the visual comparison to station trends and of course the better approximation of simple area weighted reconstructions using surface station data.

The authors of Steig et al. have not been queried by myself or anyone else that I’m aware of regarding the quality of the higher PC reconstructions. And the team has largely ignored what has been going on over on the Air Vent. This post however demonstrates strongly improved verification statistics which should send chills down their collective backs.

Ryan was generous in giving credit to others with his wording, he has put together this amazing piece of work himself using bits of code and knowledge gained from the numerous other posts by himself and others on the subject. He’s done a top notch job again, through a Herculean effort in code and debugging.

If you didn’t read Ryan’s other post which led to this work the link is:

In order to choose which version of Antarctica is more likely to represent the real 50-year history, we need to calculate statistics with which to compare the reconstructions. For this post, we will examine r, r^2, R^2, RE, and CE for various conditions, including an analysis of the accuracy of the RegEM imputation. While Steig’s paper did provide verification statistics against the satellite data, the only verification statistics that related to ground data were provided by the restricted 15-predictor reconstruction, where the withheld ground stations were the verification target. We will perform a more comprehensive analysis of performance with respect to both RegEM and the ground data. Additionally, we will compare how our reconstruction performs against Steig’s reconstruction using the same methods used by Steig in his paper, along with a few more comprehensive tests.

To calculate what I would consider a healthy battery of verification statistics, we need to perform several reconstructions. The reason for this is to evaluate how well the method reproduces known data. Unless we know how well we can reproduce things we know, we cannot determine how likely the method is to estimate things we do not know. This requires that we perform a set of reconstructions by withholding certain information. The reconstructions we will perform are:

1. A 13-PC reconstruction using all manned and AWS stations, with ocean stations and Adelaide excluded. This is the main reconstruction.

2. An early calibration reconstruction using AVHRR data from 1982-1994.5. This will allow us to assess how well the method reproduces the withheld AVHRR data.

3. A late calibration reconstruction using AVHRR data from 1994.5-2006. Coupled with the early calibration, this provides comprehensive coverage of the entire satellite period.

4. A 13-PC reconstruction with the AWS stations withheld. The purpose of this reconstruction is to use the AWS stations as a verification target (i.e., see how well the reconstruction estimates the AWS data, and then compare the estimation against the real AWS data).

5. The same set of four reconstructions as above, but using 21 PCs in order to assess the stability of the reconstruction to included PCs.

6. A 3-PC reconstruction using Steig’s station complement to demonstrate replication of his process.

7. A 3-PC reconstruction using the 13-PC reconstruction model frame as input to demonstrate the inability of Steig’s process to properly resolve the geographical locations of the trends and trend magnitudes.

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Using the above set of reconstructions, we will then calculate the following sets of verification statistics:

5. Comparison of the RegEM imputation model frame for the ground stations vs. the actual ground station data.

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The provided script performs all of the required reconstructions and makes all of the required verification calculations. I will not present them all here (because there are a lot of them). I will present the ones that I feel are the most telling and important. In fact, I have not yet plotted all the different results myself. So for those of you with R, there are plenty of things to plot.

Without further ado, let’s take a look at a few of those things.

Fig. 2: Split reconstruction verification for Steig reconstruction

You may remember the figure above; it represents the split reconstruction verification statistics for Steig’s reconstruction. Note the significant regions of negative CE values (which indicate that a simple average of observed temperatures explains more variance than the reconstruction). Of particular note, the region where Steig reports the highest trend – West Antarctica and the Ross Ice Shelf – shows the worst performance.

Let’s compare to our reconstruction:

Fig. 3: Split reconstruction verification for 13-PC reconstruction

There still are a few areas of negative RE (too small to see in this panel) and some areas of negative CE. However, unlike the Steig reconstruction, ours performs well in most of West Antarctica, the Peninsula, and the Ross Ice Shelf. All values are significantly higher than the Steig reconstruction, and we show much smaller regions with negative values.

As an aside, the r^2 plots are not corrected by the Monte Carlo analysis yet. However, as shown in the previous post concerning Steig’s verification statistics, the maximum r^2 values using AR(8) noise were only 0.019, which produces an indistinguishable change from Fig. 3.

Now that we know that our method provides a more faithful reproduction of the satellite data, it is time to see how faithfully our method reproduces the ground data. A simple way to compare ours against Steig’s is to look at scatterplots of reconstructed anomalies vs. ground station anomalies:

Your browser may not support display of this image.

Fig. 4: 13-PC scatterplot (left); Steig reconstruction (right)

The 13-PC reconstruction shows significantly improved performance in predicting ground temperatures as compared to the Steig reconstruction. This improved performance is also reflected in plots of correlation coefficient:

Fig. 5: Correlation coefficient by geographical location

As noted earlier, the performance in the Peninsula , West Antarctica, and the Ross Ice Shelf are noticeably better for our reconstruction. Examining the plots this way provides a good indication of the geographical performance of the two reconstructions. Another way to look at this – one that allows a bit more precision – is to plot the results as bar plots, sorted by location:

Fig. 6: Correlation coefficients for the 13-PC reconstruction

Fig. 7: Correlation coefficients for the Steig reconstruction

The difference is quite striking.

While a good performance with respect to correlation is nice, this alone does not mean we have a “good” reconstruction. One common problem is over-fitting during the calibration period (where the calibration period is defined as the periods over which actual data is present). This leads to fantastic verification statistics during calibration, but results in poor performance outside of that period.

This is the purpose of the restricted reconstruction, where we withhold all AWS data. We then compare the reconstruction values against the actual AWS data. If our method resulted in overfitting (or is simply a poor method), our verification performance will be correspondingly poor.

Since Steig did not use AWS stations for performing his TIR reconstruction, this allows us to do an apples-to-apples comparison between the two methods. We can use the AWS stations as a verification target for both reconstructions. We can then compare which reconstruction results in better performance from the standpoint of being able to predict the actual AWS data. This is nice because it prevents us from later being accused of holding the reconstructions to different standards.

Note that since all of the AWS data was withheld, RE is undefined. RE uses the calibration period mean, and there is no calibration period for the AWS stations because we did the reconstruction without including any AWS data. We could run a split test like we did with the satellite data, but that would require additional calculations and is an easier test to pass regardless. Besides, the reason we have to run a split test with the satellite data is that we cannot withhold all of the satellite data and still be able to do the reconstruction. With the AWS stations, however, we are not subject to the same restriction.

With that, I think we can safely put to bed the possibility that our calibration performance was due to overfitting. The verification performance is quite good, with the exception of one station in West Antarctica (Siple). Some of you may be curious about Siple, so I decided to plot both the original data and the reconstructed data. The problem with Siple is clearly the short record length and strange temperature swings (in excess of 10 degrees), which may indicate problems with the measurements:

Fig. 9: Siple station data

While we should still be curious about Siple, we also would not be unjustified in considering it an outlier given the performance of our reconstruction at the remainder of the station locations.

Leaving Siple for the moment, let’s take a look at how Steig’s reconstruction performs.

Not too bad – but not as good as ours. Curiously, Siple does not look like an outlier in Steig’s reconstruction. In its place, however, seems to be the entire Peninsula. Overall, the correlation coefficients for the Steig reconstruction are poorer than ours. This allows us to conclude that our reconstruction more accurately calculated the temperature in the locations where we withheld real data.

Along with correlation coefficient, the other statistic we need to look at is CE. Of the three statistics used by Steig – r, RE, and CE – CE is the most difficult statistic to pass. This is another reason why we are not concerned about lack of RE in this case: RE is an easier test to pass.

The difference in performance between the two reconstructions is more apparent in the CE statistic. Steig’s reconstruction demonstrates negligible skill in the Peninsula, while our skill in the Peninsula is much higher. With the exception of Siple, our West Antarctic stations perform comparably. For the rest of the continent, our CE statistics are significantly higher than Steig’s – and we have no negative CE values.

So in a test of which method best reproduces withheld ground station data, our reconstruction shows significantly more skill than Steig’s.

The final set of statistics we will look at is the performance of RegEM. This is important because it will show us how faithful RegEM was to the original data. Steig did not perform any verification similar to this because PTTLS does not return the model frame. Unlike PTTLS, however, our version of RegEM (IPCA) does return the model frame. Since the model frame is accessible, it is incumbent upon us to look at it.

Note: In order to have a comparison, we will run a Steig-type reconstruction using RegEM IPCA.

There are two key statistics for this: r and R^2. R^2 is called “average explained variance”. It is a similar statistic to RE and CE with the difference being that the original data comes from the calibration period instead of the verification period. In the case of RegEM, all of the original data is technically “calibration period”, which is why we do not calculate RE and CE. Those are verification period statistics.

Let’s look at how RegEM IPCA performed for our reconstruction vs. Steig’s.

As you can see, RegEM performed quite faithfully with respect to the original data. This is a double-edged sword; if RegEM performs too faithfully, you end up with overfitting problems. However, we already checked for overfitting using our restricted reconstruction (with the AWS stations as the verification target).

While we had used regpar settings of 9 (main reconstruction) and 6 (restricted reconstruction), Steig only used a regpar setting of 3. This leads us to question whether that setting was sufficient for RegEM to be able to faithfully represent the original data. The only way to tell is to look, and the next frame shows us that Steig’s performance was significantly less than ours.

The performance using a regpar setting of 3 is noticeably worse, especially in East Antarctica. This would indicate that a setting of 3 does not provide enough degrees of freedom for the imputation to accurately represent the existing data. And if the imputation cannot accurately represent the existing data, then its representation of missing data is correspondingly suspect.

Another point I would like to note is the heavy weighting of Peninsula and open-ocean stations. Steig’s reconstruction relied on a total of 5 stations in West Antarctica, 4 of which are located on the eastern and southern edges of the continent at the Ross Ice Shelf. The resolution of West Antarctic trends based on the ground stations alone is rather poor.

Now that we’ve looked at correlation coefficients, let’s look at a more stringent statistic: average explained variance, or R^2.

Fig. 15: R^2 between RegEM model frame and actual ground data

Using a regpar setting of 9 also provides good R^2 statistics. The Peninsula is still a bit wanting. I checked the R^2 for the 21-PC reconstruction and the numbers were nearly identical. Without increasing the regpar setting and running the risk of overfitting, this seems to be about the limit of the imputation accuracy.

Steig’s reconstruction, on the other hand, shows some fairly low values for R^2. The Peninsula is an odd mix of high and low values, West Antarctica and Ross are middling, while East Antarctica is poor overall. This fits with the qualitative observation that the Steig method seemed to spread the Peninsula warming all over the continent, including into East Antarctica – which by most other accounts is cooling slightly, not warming.

CONCLUSION

With the exception of the RegEM verification, all of the verification statistics listed above were performed exactly (split reconstruction) or analogously (restricted 15 predictor reconstruction) by Steig in the Nature paper. In all cases, our reconstruction shows significantly more skill than the Steig reconstruction. So if these are the metrics by which we are to judge this type of reconstruction, ours is objectively superior.

As before, I would qualify this by saying that not all of the errors and uncertainties have been quantified yet, so I’m not comfortable putting a ton of stock into any of these reconstructions. However, I am perfectly comfortable saying that Steig’s reconstruction is not a faithful representation of Antarctic temperatures over the past 50 years and that ours is closer to the mark.

NOTE ON THE SCRIPT

If you want to duplicate all of the figures above, I would recommend letting the entire script run. Be patient; it takes about 20 minutes. While this may seem long, remember that it is performing 11 different reconstructions and calculating a metric butt-ton of verification statistics.

There is a plotting section at the end that has examples of all of the above plots (to make it easier for you to understand how the custom plotting functions work) and it also contains indices and explanations for the reconstructions, variables, and statistics. As always, though, if you have any questions or find a feature that doesn’t work, let me know and I’ll do my best to help.

Lastly, once you get comfortable with the script, you can probably avoid running all the reconstructions. They take up a lot of memory, and if you let all of them run, you’ll have enough room for maybe 2 or 3 more before R refuses to comply. So if you want to play around with the different RegEM variants, numbers of included PCs, and regpar settings, I would recommend getting comfortable with the script and then loading up just the functions. That will give you plenty of memory for 15 or so reconstructions.

As a bonus, I included the reconstruction that takes the output of our reconstruction, uses it for input to the Steig method, and spits out this result:

Fig. 17: Steig reconstruction using the 13-PC reconstruction as input.

The name for the list containing all the information and trends is “r.3.test”.

225 thoughts on “Steig et al – falsified”

These people have been most careful in making any statements that Steig et al were falsified. Me thinks that Nature will now have to face the music. BTW Nature is an incredible journal and has published some brilliant work… this should not detract from its inherent quality.

The Team will of course never back down on this. The Team members will say that the errors don’t matter and soon “independent” studies by “independent” groups will verify the Antarctic warming. All these “independent” studies about the Antarctic warming will be highlighted in the next IPCC report.

Good luck getting ANY coverage of this in the mainstream media. That same media that plastered Steig at al’s flimsy and biased results all over the place earlier this year.
So there we have it, Antarctica has NOT warmed after all. Ice extent keeps increasing year on year and the mainstream media STILL carries alarmist stories about ice melting faster than ever before.
I guess we can amend that old saying, “there are lies, damn lies, statistics and mainstream media climate stories.”

Ken Hall: I think in this case you may be wrong. I think the media will pick up on this because its sensational. Also the Svensmark Videos seems to have been made very professionally (the other story) and this will also be picked up by major networks. This is my guess of course (we can always hope).

A bit too technical for me but I got the gist!
In reference to the Cheesemans Safaris ad above, if memory serves, (& that’s a big if in these days), is there not a region of the Western Antarctic (no bears) where ecobunnies travel to in luxury aboard liners, & they land, dip their toes into the sea, then warm up in a geothermal pool somewhere nearby, or am I losing it? I am sure I’ve seen this activity on some holiday programme somewhere. Nobody seems to add 2 + 2 & ask a question, could this be what contributes to any apparent warming in the Peninsula? I’ll try & do a bit of research on that.

Re a bit OT Svensmark: I agree that cloud nuclei do form more frequently when sun activity is less. The proviso may be that they form where they usually would form (ie not in the Sahara). I would have to say that living in East Queensland (Australia) they have formed dramatically more than over the past year especially Cumullus nimbus (low cloud) which have been responsible for extremely above average rainfall in this area this year (ie all the dams are full) and drought is over (usual in this part of the world)

I found this extract from the Cheesemans Safaris website, so I wasn’t dreaming after all! Deception Island is on just off the Peninsula. They also mention on their site that there is evidence for global warming in the oceans around the Peninsula, but clearly can’t see the possible connection, probably because it doesn’t fit their belief system.
“Deception Island, in the South Shetlands, is one of the most exciting islands on our voyage. This horseshoe-shaped volcanic island is still active, as the hot thermal pools there demonstrate. We hope to land on both the outside wall and inside the caldera center that opens to the ocean via a narrow gap called Neptune’s Bellows. The landing at Bailey Head on the outside has close to half a million Chinstraps nesting at this time of year, but the sea can be a bit tricky with steep swells crashing on an exposed beach. Inside Deception’s huge caldera we hope to make a fascinating landing, which may include a short hike up the mountainside to the lookout among the lichen-draped cliffs. On the beach at Whaler’s Bay we may find Weddell Seals basking and we’ll go ashore if the tide is correct and the weather is favorable. Then prepare for one of the most unique experiences of this voyage – soaking in the island’s thermal pools surrounded by clouds of steam alongside the beach at Pendulum Cove. The water temperature can be fairly comfortable, although it can get so hot that it’s necessary to mix it with colder water. ”
Now that’s what I call warming! Definitely a third ice cube required for the G & T at bath time me thinks. They also add this proviso:-
“NOTE: Antarctic conditions change very rapidly and we will make every possible effort to accomplish our schedule, however local weather can’t be predicted or controlled and we must be flexible. Don’t be fooled, no tour operator can guarantee landings.”
I thought the whole raison d’être for stopping global warming was to control the weather. Presumably non-local weather can be predicted & controlled then?
AtB

Still OT, but having poked the Daily Telegraph in the eye, thought I should balance with another of today’s articles: Rachel Carson, environmentalism’s answer to Pol Pot . Note the comments immediately descend into ad hom. Delingpole is clearly a Realist. That makes two on the Telegraph’s roster.

Alan the Brit: On the official deception island site (http://www.deceptionisland.aq/volcanic.php) I find the following: “In 1992, enhanced seismic activity on Deception Island was accompanied by ground deformation and increased water temperatures.”. There are also several undersea volcanos near the Antarctic Peninsula, I think. Could some of the warming of the peninsula simply be caused by increased volcanic activity?

I await the publication of this after peer review with baited breath – perhaps it would be an interesting exercise for Ryan O to take us through the submission & review process step-by-step as it happens?
One thing I notice from ‘fig. 1’ above – There’s still a lot of red on the map is there not?

Chris: Yes. Overall, Antarctica has warmed from 1957-2006. There is no debating that point. (However, other than the Peninsula, the warming is not statistically significant. )
The important difference is the location of the warming and the magnitude of the warming. Steig’s paper has the warming concentrated on the Ross Ice Shelf – which would lead you to entirely different conclusions than having a minimum on the ice shelf. As far as magnitude goes, the warming for the continent is half of what was reported by Steig (0.12 vs. 0.06 Deg C/Decade).
Additionally, Steig shows whole-continent warming from 1967-2006; this analysis shows that most of the continent has cooled from 1967-2006. Given that the 1940’s were significantly warmer in the Antarctic than 1957 (the 1957-1960 period was unusually cold in the Antarctic), focusing on 1957 can give a somewhat slanted picture of the temperature trends in the continent.

Chris S (04:50:12) :
I await the publication of this after peer review with baited breath – perhaps it would be an interesting exercise for Ryan O to take us through the submission & review process step-by-step as it happens?
One thing I notice from ‘fig. 1′ above – There’s still a lot of red on the map is there not?
I encourage Ryan to compose this as a comment on the original and submit it to Nature. If they reject it, it will be interesting to see why. It can always be published elsewhere. While the bias for peer review in established journals will continue for some time, if they keep publishing bad science, and then not acknowledging it, they will eventually lose stature. In time, they may go the way of the MSM. I think “open access journals” will eventually rival, and maybe even surpass, the traditional print journals. There is also arxiv.org.
On Fig. 1, I think if one starts a few years in the future, their will be more blue. But since Steig started in 1957, it is best to challenge it without distractions over cherry picking. It is the method, not the time period, that needs to be debunked.

Chris,
If you follow the two Jeffs’ work, they do show some warming at about 1/2 the rate quoted in Steig. One of the Jeffs (I forget which) also showed that most of the actual warming occurred in the first 5-10 years. Take those years out and the trend flips towards cooling for the last 40 years. (You’d have to backtrack through AirVent and Climate Audit but the work is there.)

Great work Ryan O and Jeff Id and Steve McIntyre.
The work either has to be submitted to Nature or, at least, widely spread around the temperature reconstruction community because this work also shows that the general RegEm process, itself, is not a robust in-filling procedure.
The choice of how many PCs to use radically changes the result, it almost looks random with even signs changing in between PCs. I think even relying on the PC with the highest statistical correlation only is not going to produce faithful reconstructions.
The Team and others need to abandon this process except for specialized needs, not to reconstruct important temperature series.

Chris S,
The problem is that with such limited data and ennabling algorithms, you can pick whatever color you like.
This reconstruction is somewhat like the hockey stick in that any data plugged into Steig’s program smears the data to reveal the desired result. In other words, Steig’s handiwork is wanting. By changing the PCs and regpar settings, any desired output is attainable.
Ryan also took his better reconstruction and used the Steig method, and the result is even warming over the Antarctic. It fails.
It makes you wonder if they realize that the PCs and regpar adjustments invalidate their approach, or they are hoping that no one catches on.
They are in trouble when this type of, let’s call it “inadequacy”, has been explained clearly enough that a plumber can understand it.
If Nature does not respond quickly and boldly the magazine will be a laughingstock.

“I hope that Ryan O will write a rebuttal letter to Nature, and/or publish a paper. It is the only way the Team will back down on this. – Anthony”
The team will never back down. This isn’t about science. It isn’t about truth. It’s about politics.

VG (01:45:07) :
“BTW Nature is an incredible journal and has published some brilliant work… this should not detract from its inherent quality.”
That’s all fine and well. But, shouldn’t Nature do some investigation before running with a story?

OT but important:
A Forum led by Koffee Anan will publish a report this week stating 300.000 climate casualties per year. (via Climate Depot).
The report is already under scrutany by Dr Pileke which findingd were published in the Washington Post. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/science/earth/29climate.html?_r=1&ref=earth
The latest postings at WUWT about this subject already closed the door on any alarmist findings.
When will our politicians see they are tricked by the UN and it’s corrupt sicko management? They are turning the world into a mess.

Timbrom – thanks for the link . I enjoy Booker’s columns , but don’t go into yhe blogs . Booker is a big fan of this site . BTW , most of the ad homs are coming from a notorious troll who has found his way into a number of other sites . I hope he doesn’t show up here .

@VG
I don’t share your adulation for Nature. It may have been a great journal in 1937, but for many years has transformed into a repository for all things in agreement with AGW. They seem more than willing to publish just about any article no matter how absurd, like crap through a goose as long as it passes the AGW smell test.
Look at what Steve McIntyre had to endure to debunk the hockey stick, yet Nature is still in the bag for Mann.
Although not Nature, it has been four months since Steve submitted his paper on Santer 08 with no response as of yet to the best of my knowledge.
Yet, look at the expediency given to pro-AGW papers; in like Flynn.
The rejection of Spencer’s latest work is tantamount to the political influence in many of these so-called science journals. Who wants to guess how many months will pass without acceptance should this repudiation of Steig et al be submitted for “peer review”?
That said, I would be willing to contribute financially to this effort.

Espan:“There are also several undersea volcanos near the Antarctic Peninsula, I think. Could some of the warming of the peninsula simply be caused by increased volcanic activity?”
Obviously yes, the real question is “How much?”

Chris S,
The ‘red’ on the map means that the ‘warmest’ places on Antarctica is cold enough to kill you, unless you are very well prepared.
As the Catlin scam discovered, believing that the world is roasting due to a human caused apocalypse is quite different from actually going out to the field.
What the ‘red’ really means is that people are easily deceived by colors and pictures, which is what Mann, Steig, Hansen, Gore, etc. etc. etc. all knew when they set out to fabricate AGW.

So, I still see warming in all your reconstructions?REPLY: If you go back and look at what Steig did, you’ll note that he chose a start point of 1957. However from 1967 to present, there has been a cooling trend, and the amount of warming (if you can call it that, since the continent is still bitterly cold) is statistically insignificant. See Ryan O’s comments earlier. – Anthony

LarryD (06:42:07) :
Espan:“There are also several undersea volcanos near the Antarctic Peninsula, I think. Could some of the warming of the peninsula simply be caused by increased volcanic activity?”
“Obviously yes, the real question is “How much?””
Yes, but to answer the question of how much, it is mostly negligible.REPLY: You are making an assumption without any firsthand knowledge that it is negligible. Without doing a study to determine the magnitude, you cannot be sure. Remember, we aren’t talking about much. What we do know is that water around Deception Island is warm enough to boil shrimp at times, allowing tourists there to pick up “ready to eat” shrimp on the beach. Our own moderator confirms this with direct experience. How much is the ocean warmed in the region translating to warming air temps in the Peninsula? We don’t know. What we do know for certain is that the Peninsula has a wholly different warming trend than the main continent, and that it is so far removed geographically it should probably be declared a different climate zone. – Anthony

REPLY: If you go back and look at what Steig did, you’ll note that he chose a start point of 1957. However from 1967 to present, there has been a cooling trend, and the amount of warming (if you can call it that, since the continent is still bitterly cold) is statistically insignificant. See Ryan O’s comments earlier. – Anthony
So 67+ shows cooling, and 57+ shows warming…which is the superior one to use? Where is that 67-06 reconstruction?REPLY: Follow the trail backwards and you’ll see it. – Anthony

Ryan O. thanks for your response. Good luck with your efforts to publish, I know from my own experience that it can be a real pain in the unmentionables. I do wonder why you feel that shortening the time period (ie throwing out data) is preferable though. Have you or (either) Jeff looked at aerosol or ozone hole effects on the temperature trend?
On a slightly different note, but interesting (to me at least) regarding Antartica – it seems a recent expedition to South Georgia recorded the first confirmed breeding by hoverflies there ( http://www.expeditionsail.com/blog.htm scroll down to Jan 14th).

P Walker (06:28:39) :
Timbrom – thanks for the link . I enjoy Booker’s columns , but don’t go into the blogs . Booker is a big fan of this site . BTW , most of the ad homs are coming from a notorious troll who has found his way into a number of other sites . I hope he doesn’t show up here .
I won’t mention his name, but I doubt the little fella will show up here. This is a science site, and he favors political journals. (He’s a regular ranter at The American Spectator.) Even if he dopes show up, the mods will snip him so much he won’t hang around.
TBH, I think he’s kind of entertaining.

““Overall, Antarctica has warmed from 1957-2006. There is no debating that point. (However, other than the Peninsula, the warming is not statistically significant. ) ” I think that’s not an ideal way to phrase it. If it isn’t statistically significant, that means that you are not confident that extra-peninsular Antarctica has warmed. I suggest:
In Antarctica outside the peninsula, there was NO statistically significant warming in 1957-2006.

re: Bill Illis (05:43:20)
Bill, I disagree that the problem is with RegEM. It is like any other program – garbage in, garbage out. This is more an issue of understanding the problem, the data, and methods of analysis.

What never seems to register with the alarmists is the earth has warmed significantly since the end of the last glaciation ice age. The sea levels have gone up somewhere around 100 meters. Yes, somewhere. What engineers call that last bit of something in temperature and sea level rise is ‘measurement error’. It surely isn’t a signal of anything.
Meanwhile, we sit and watch the abject idiocy of trying to divine the last tenth of a degree of temperature or millimeter of sea rise, when in fact the measurement of what was, is so imprecise that it makes the exercise all but futile.
No one seems to understand why the 100,000 year cycling glaciation ice ages started about 5 million years ago, nor when the cycling might end. But I think it is a safe bet the cycling glaciation isn’t over …

Ah, yes, reconstruction… the art of extrapolation into the cluless world… just like when they find a dinosaur bone and can extrapolate a whole body with skin and colours. In my world, we call this imagination.

Layman Lurker (08:40:28) :
I plotted the south pole here too.http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/04/12/closest-station-antarctic-reconstruction/
What’s interesting about the link is that it also shows an NOAA plot demonstrating the similarity between this reconstruction and what used to be the mainstream consensus.
—-
Thanks for carrying this post Anthony, I was worried it wouldn’t get the attention it deserves. Ryan has put huge hours into this and has done a fantastic job. BTW, for anyone who’s interested, complete (very neatly written) turnkey R code is included in a link at the above post. Since R is free, anyone interested can verify his results themselves.

Volcanoes around Antarctica are obviously hot, but their heat is probably quite localized. Look at temperatures around the much larger Yellowstone volcano, which is known to have boiling water in areas, and it is hard to distinguish atmospheric temperatures near Yellowstone from that of the surrounding states.REPLY: True, but what we don’t have in Yellowstone is heat transport into the ocean, with wider dispersal, which then has a much larger surface area in contact with the air.
Consider this quote: “Although a few fur seals basked in the sun, Prossin says most sea mammals stay away from Deception because the water is warm relative to the temperature outside in the strait.”
Source here
And this: Deception Island exhibits some wildly varying microclimates. Some water temperatures reach 70°C (158°F). Near volcanic areas, the air can be as hot as 40°C (103°F).
Source here
My point is that the Antarctic peninsula is volcanically active, we have demonstrations that the seawater at at least one location is hugely, anomalously, warmer than it should be. How much of the water around the peninsula is warmed and how much of the heat is transported into the air?
The peninsula also has the greatest population for Antarctica, so we may even have some UHI and microclimate influences going on to bias the thermometers. – Anthony

I know this is OT, but i just read the Pielke post about framing and think it conveys a number of key points. Alarmists have done a very good job of framing skeptics, using deniers, flat-earthers, etc. to describe us. We, on the other hand, have done a very poor job of framing them, preferring to believe that facts and common sense will win the day over fear and hype. We also have weak terms like warmists, etc., that are ill considered for the weight of meaning they carry. Not for no reason was the name denier chosen.
We need a real term that will strike fear in the hearts of alarmists everywhere. A term that is loaded with associations that will send self-respecting people of their ilk running for the hills.
I suggest Climate Puritans. I do so based upon H.L. Menckens famous observation that Puritans are people who have the nagging suspicion that someone, somewhere, may be happy. Puritan is laden with meaning that will set blood boiling on the left, despite it being wholly accurate as a description. Can anyone seriously argue that Al Gore’s pronouncements in the face of his own actions are not Puritanical? Or Hansen’s? Based upon the views of those in Pielke’s article, I believe this term ‘frames’ proponents of AGW properly, so that they can be seen by the public for what they really are.
We need to fight back more effectively. To paraphrase Nancy Pelosi – hey, we’re saving the world here.

re: Jeff Id (09:41:01)
Yes Jeff I went back to your post after I saw Smokey’s graph to compare. It is not as clear in your plot but you can see the increase in noise after 1982. Is the AVHRR thing it just a coincidence? Do you see the same tendancies with other surface station series?

while I generally agree with Ryan’s result and think his post is very good, I do have a slight problem with this statement:
“Overall, Antarctica has warmed from 1957-2006. There is no debating that point. (However, other than the Peninsula, the warming is not statistically significant)”
A measurement is a measurement and is not in itself ‘statistically significant’ or not. If I measure the temperature outside and it is 67.2F, that is what it is and it carries no statistical significance as that is a concept that does not apply here. The significance comes in if you compare the measured value to its ‘expected’ value and want to argue that it is significantly different than the observed spread in such differences. So, one may ask what the expected value for the Antarctic would be and what the observed spread is.

Mike Bryant (06:17:50) :
“Chris S (04:50:12) :
I await the publication of this after peer review with baited breath”
What are you using for bait?
——————————————————-
LOL. You caught that too. I was going to ask, “What? Did you have worms for breakfast?”

“”” Ryan O (05:08:15) :
Chris: Yes. Overall, Antarctica has warmed from 1957-2006. There is no debating that point. (However, other than the Peninsula, the warming is not statistically significant. ) “””
Ryan, I am completely ill equipped to understand exactly what all that stuff in your essay means. You are forcing an old geezer to hit the books for a spell. Well I’ll do that instead of running up the office stairs two at a time for exercise.
I’m not sure I agree with your conclusion: “the warming is not statistically significant.”
That to me implies that the signal is lost in the noise; and you are saying (in effect) that your result is “unreliable”.
And I don’t think you really mean that.
I would tend to say that the “warming” that your analysis claims (and for that matter Steig et al too) is not CLIMATICALLY significant.
I for one, am not going to claim that I don’t believe that the earth has warmed a little since the IGY of 1957/8; and maybe it has cooled some more recently. And I would expect the polar regions to show some evidence of those warmings or coolings, and maybe they are different from the earth as a whole.
But for crying out loud; they are still 40-50 deg C underwater as far as being of any significance for the earth’s future. Wake me up when the Antarcitc continent gets up to only 30 below, mean surface temp.
So I think you need to rethink your conclusion; if your statistics reveal a real signal, then they are significant; but the global consequences of that signal may be as unimportant as the proverbial beat of the butterfly’s wing.
And that is what I think is wrong with the Steig et al paper; Antarctica warmed a lttle; whoop de do ! I think I’ll have another beer. And then I am going to try and understand your stat maths.
George

Leif Svalgaard (10:20:43) :
I agree with that too. The significance of a figure can only be significant or not only when compared to an assemble of other figures and depending on the measurement errors. Two figures are always significantly different if outside of their respective measurement error.
5 +/- 1 is not significantly different than 4 +/- 1.
5.0 +/- 0.1 is not significantly different than 4.9 +/- 0.2

“Overall, Antarctica has warmed from 1957-2006. There is no debating that point. (However, other than the Peninsula, the warming is not statistically significant)”
A measurement is a measurement and is not in itself ’statistically significant’ or not. If I measure the temperature outside and it is 67.2F, (…)
Except it is not as simple as a measurement since the 0.06c/decade trend emerged from statistical processing, more riguorous than Steig et al. but still a statistical processing. Moreover given the conditions the hundredth of a degree C precision is simply meaningless, cooling or warming.

chip (09:56:38) : “We need a…term that is loaded with associations that will send self-respecting people of their ilk running for the hills. I suggest Climate Puritans.”
But that is using the enemy’s terms, usually a mistake. They’ve been using “climate” lately to try to slide out from under the fact that they’ve been predicting warming that isn’t going to happen. A proper term should incorporate the word “warm.” Alliteration would make it even better, as in “Warmist Wormtongues,” etc., though the latter, while accurate, is a bit pejorative. I’m fairly sure you can come up with a dozen better words starting with W that aptly describe them. Very sure.
“Liars” and “Data-diddling doo-doo brains” are right out. Sorry.

REPLY: You are making an assumption without any firsthand knowledge that it is negligible. Without doing a study to determine the magnitude, you cannot be sure. Remember, we aren’t talking about much. What we do know is that water around Deception Island is warm enough to boil shrimp at times, allowing tourists there to pick up “ready to eat” shrimp on the beach. Our own moderator confirms this with direct experience. How much is the ocean warmed in the region translating to warming air temps in the Peninsula? We don’t know. What we do know for certain is that the Peninsula has a wholly different warming trend than the main continent, and that it is so far removed geographically it should probably be declared a different climate zone. – Anthony
You are absolutely right, I don’t have first hand knowledge of the heat flow for those particular volcanoes in Antarctica. What I do have is knowledge of other volcanoes in the world and I suppose I was extrapolating based on that.
What I can say is there is a TON of heat flux running up and down the oceans at the mid-ocean ridges, and while there is considerable heat flux associated with these mid-ocean ridges, it does very little to change the oceans over-all temps and subsequently, the SST above.

Antonio San (10:47:28) :“Overall, Antarctica has warmed from 1957-2006. There is no debating that point. (However, other than the Peninsula, the warming is not statistically significant)”
1st: “there is no debating that point” I read that to mean it is statistically significant otherwise it would be debatable
2nd: “however, the warming is not statistically significant”
is a contradiction. My point stands:
“The significance comes in if you compare the measured value to its ‘expected’ value and want to argue that it is significantly different than the observed spread in such differences. So, one may ask what the expected value for the Antarctic would be and what the observed spread is?”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8073434.stm
The whole article can be summed up with:
“Dear West,
You invented this global warming scare to prevent us developing countries from developing too much. Now we’ll pretend to believe the scare so that you destroy your economic growth and send us lots of free money and technology. Thanks.
Yours with love, China and India”

On your reconstruction, there is only one correlation coefficient below 0.4 which corresponds to a Western station among stations 10 to 20. Most correlation coefficients are above 0.6, which means an acceptable calibration. On the other hand, Steig’s results are quite poorer than yours, so Steig’s calibration could have been biased by conveniently selecting the stations on which Steig and colleagues based their assessment. Sorry for this opinion, but I cannot believe Steig and colleagues don’t know their job.

“Chris S (04:50:12) :
I await the publication of this after peer review with baited breath”
Erm … Wouldn’t the word “bated” be more appropriate? It’s breathing you are talking about, not fishing!
Your friendly nit-picking pedant.

As more often than never, I differ a bit with Leif Svalgaard’s opinion. Let’s assume the normalized TSI is 1367 W/m^2 (Modest. 1997) and the average of TSI measurements in 2008 deviates by -6.13 W/m^2 from the normalized TSI. I would say it is not significant if all deviations since 1700 AD were 1 W/m^2 above or below -6.13 W/m^2. However, if I see that the maximum deviation in the last 308 years has been -0.154 W/m^2, then I’m sure that the deviation of -6.13 W/m^2 is a significant deviation from the normalized TSI, whether it is only a measurement or not. Don’t you agree?

Alan the Brit (02:41:29) :
“… is there not a region of the Western Antarctic (no bears) where ecobunnies travel to in luxury aboard liners, & they land, dip their toes into the sea, then warm up in a geothermal pool somewhere nearby, or am I losing it?”
This may be what you remember:http://www.monolith.com.au/Deception_Island/map.htmlhttp://www.studentsonice.com/U09/day09.html
“Today was a very busy day, filled with landings, penguins and even swimming! Among other things, Whalers Bay on Deception Island is home to the first ever flight in Antarctica. This was done in 1928 by Australians Hubert Wilkins in his Lockheed Vega. The only remaining sign of any aviation in Whalers Bay is the derelict hangar. In another location on the island we were able to do a quick Antarctic swim, with the geothermal pools allowing us to warm up afterwards. The waters heated from below were so hot that as I lay on the beach, my feet were freezing, and my hands were burning. “

Hunter (06:51:59)
Your comment about colours used on maps is so true!
You also need to add in, however, the particular projection used for world maps.
I have posted this before on other threads but it is worth repeating. During the cold war typical NATO maps used a Mercator projection which greatly exaggerated the area as one moved N or S from the equator. Colours were then used, cool blue for NATO, deep red for the Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact. The overall result was to create an appearance of a massive threat from the latter. Note, I am not saying that they did not pose some threat, just that every opportunity was taken to exaggerate that threat for the general public.
The climate change/AGW crowd are merely continuing this fine tradition!!

Actually the term “baited breath” can be correct as in this poem:
Cruel Clever Cat
Sally, having swallowed cheese,
Directs down holes the scented breeze,
Enticing thus with baited breath
Nice mice to an untimely death.Reply: Ouch. ~ charles the hung over moderator

My vote for Quote of the Week. And it’s on topic!
By Ryan O. himself, in the corresponding Climate Audit thread.
“We would all probably be best served, though, to pretend my stuff is the newest Mann paper and try to rip it apart. Better to have that happen now than later. ”
Now, that’s how science is done. And it corresponds with what I said, a few weeks ago, to a development team whose software for a Japanese client I was about to start testing: “I’m a Rottweiler. But if I don’t get you, the Asian Tiger will”.
Cheers,
NeilREPLY: Spot on, I had already seen that and logged it as a candidate. – Anthony

Anthony, RealClimate have logged over 1000 comments on “The Tragedy of Climate Commons”. Are you sure you’re choosing your topics to have maximum appeal?

It’s OK, Simon. Anthony posts many more new articles every week than RC, so the folks posting there have only a relatively limited number of articles to comment on. The total gets run up as a result. Anthony could do the same thing, but he prefers to post a wide range of interesting topics. It’s more work, but it makes for a more interesting site.
And RealClimate’s small crowd of True Believers inhabit their own little echo chamber; their own self-reinforcing world, where contrary views are not tolerated, but are routinely censored. And notice how many of the posts are made by the same person, over and over again.
Also, I notice that WUWT just blew through 14 million hits today. RC must be green with envy. Sucks to be them.

“”” Nasif Nahle (13:21:18) :
As more often than never, I differ a bit with Leif Svalgaard’s opinion. Let’s assume the normalized TSI is 1367 W/m^2 (Modest. 1997) and the average of TSI measurements in 2008 deviates by -6.13 W/m^2 from the normalized TSI. I would say it is not significant if all deviations since 1700 AD were 1 W/m^2 above or below -6.13 W/m^2. However, if I see that the maximum deviation in the last 308 years has been -0.154 W/m^2, then I’m sure that the deviation of -6.13 W/m^2 is a significant deviation from the normalized TSI, whether it is only a measurement or not. Don’t you agree? “””
Wow ! I have looked at all the various satellite measurments of TSI I can find going back about three solar cycles total, although not from any one satellite, and I don’t think I have ever seen any change of the order of -6.13.
All the curves I have seen have about a 1 W/m^2 p-p over the cycle and that is about all. So where did this -6.13 change come from ?
George

“”” Stephen Brown (13:08:41) :
“Chris S (04:50:12) :
I await the publication of this after peer review with baited breath”
Erm … Wouldn’t the word “bated” be more appropriate? It’s breathing you are talking about, not fishing!
Your friendly nit-picking pedant. “””
Given that you have people here speaking several languages at once (including me), and the frequent appearance of typos; it is generally not considered Kosher to be too pedantic about incorrect spellings. Mis-usage that does not corrupt the scientific content, is generally regarded as uncouth to comment on. And in the current instance; it is a rather humerous Malapropism.
I once had a very nice Chinese young lady comment that a missing office colleague was out on fraternity leave. As the lady in question was very single; it was an appropriate observation.
GeorgeReply: Oy, nitpicking about nitpicking, and btw, you misspelled humorous. ~ charles the sometimes anti-semantic moderator.

Leif and George Smith,
The “no debating Antarctica has warmed” comment is, indeed, a contradiction.
I should have said that all reconstructions yield a positive trend, though in most cases the trend for the continent is not statistically significant. 😉

Nasif Nahle (13:21:18) :
As more often than never, I differ a bit with Leif Svalgaard’s opinion. Let’s assume the normalized TSI is 1367 W/m^2 (Modest. 1997) and the average of TSI measurements in 2008 deviates by -6.13 W/m^2 from the normalized TSI. I would say it is not significant if all deviations since 1700 AD were 1 W/m^2 above or below -6.13 W/m^2. However, if I see that the maximum deviation in the last 308 years has been -0.154 W/m^2, then I’m sure that the deviation of -6.13 W/m^2 is a significant deviation from the normalized TSI, whether it is only a measurement or not. Don’t you agree?
—————–
What are the significant digits on the 1367 W/m^2? What is the error on that number? At the very least give a standard deviation with proper significant figures. In any case, you can’t get better accuracy in the measurement than what it can do, anything smaller than that is part of the noise.

I wonder would Climate Clergy, with the possibility of adding the adjective Puritanical, do the trick. IE, the Climate Clergy at Real Climate believe in a puritanical…
While we are on the subject of naming and framing, what about everyone on this site substituting the word Spreadsheet for Model. Joe public would tend to put a lot more faith in a model than a spreadsheet so allowing model to be used in general parlance gives an air of scientific credibility to what is essentially a spreadsheet that represents the opinions of people whose jobs depend on Global Warming being, if not real, then funded.
The sentence, “the latest spreadsheet predicting 300,000 deaths a year from Global warming has been released by the puritantical climate clergy at … has a certain ring to it.
S

Chip,
I am not sure you want to use the term “Puritan” The Puritans were a rather stern lot but they weren’t stupid. Beside they were my ancestors and I have a real soft spot in my heart for them.
I really don’t want my great to the 10th power grandfather to be associated with the AGW crew.

George E. Smith (14:18:29) : & Ray (15:31:52) :
I think you’re missing the point Nasif Nahle (13:21:18) : was trying to make.
The -6.13 W/m^2 was I think a hypothetical deviation which would be insignificant if all previous deviations had been the same or there-abouts.
Given that previous deviations were much less, that would then make it significant.
I could of course be wrong. 😉
DaveE

Bated is short for “abated” (halted)–in other words, waiting with bated breath means waiting breathlessly, in great anticipation.
Here are names that have been suggested by others. Warmmongers. Hotheads. Greenshirts. The latter is the best, being the strongest, as well as being a nice riposte to “deniers.”

Ray (15:31:52) :
What are the significant digits on the 1367 W/m^2? What is the error on that number? At the very least give a standard deviation with proper significant figures. In any case, you can’t get better accuracy in the measurement than what it can do, anything smaller than that is part of the noise.
I agree with your last assertion, which doesn’t mean that I agree with the remainder of your post. 1367 W/m^2 is the normalized output of TSI and it is applied for avoiding incongruities on updates, insertions and deletions, even whether the latter are involuntarily or voluntariliy introduced into databases.

Ray (15:31:52) :
Nasif Nahle (13:21:18) :Let’s assume the normalized TSI is 1367 W/m^2 (Modest. 1997) and the average of TSI measurements in 2008 deviates by -6.13 W/m^2 from the normalized TSI.
It does not deviate. The absolute calibration of TSI is hard and different spacecraft instruments disagree. The best modern measurements from TIM on SORCE is about 5 W.m^2 below the ‘normal’ TSI of 1366 because of instrumental differences. The ‘relative error’ [that is the error on any given instrument compared to earlier values from the same instrument] is almost a thousand times better, at the 0.007 W/m^2 level. We know the variation of the TSI value over time better than 0.1 W/m^2.

@George A. Smith… Channel 10, which is for TSI at Earth’s distance, does give a deviation of -5.99 W/m^2; that’s close to the deviation from the normalized TSI at channel 5 which is for TSI at 1 AU from the Sun. The difference between channel 5 and 10 is quite small (0.14 W/m^2).

‘Climate conartists’?
‘Fear Mongers’?
‘Climate crazies’?
‘Climate Profiteers’?
‘Apocalyptic conartists’?
But whatever the name is, do not let them get away with their transparent con in changing the name from global warming to ‘climate change’.
They predicted ‘global warming’: AGW
They predicted ramatic dangerous terrible changes in the climate by *now*.
They do not get to redefine AGW after 20 years of being wrong about AGW in a transparently cynical attempt to re-frame the issue.

Nasif Nahle (16:20:13) :Channel 10, which is for TSI at Earth’s distance, does give a deviation of -5.99 W/m^2;
Get off that 5 W/m^2 difference, it is the ‘normalized’ TSI that is ‘wrong’ by that amount. There is no long-term variation of that magnitude. A single large sunspot can [very rarely] give several W/m^2 signal, but that does not show up in the, say, yearly average.

“”” Nasif Nahle (16:20:13) :
@George A. Smith… Channel 10, which is for TSI at Earth’s distance, does give a deviation of -5.99 W/m^2; that’s close to the deviation from the normalized TSI at channel 5 which is for TSI at 1 AU from the Sun. The difference between channel 5 and 10 is quite small (0.14 W/m^2). “””
Well Nasif, I’ll just have to take your word for it; I don’t get either channel 10 or channel 5 very well on my T&V, but you probably are referring to something else I am not privy to.
All I have to go on is some plots that purport to be data from about three or maybe four different satellites; that somehow turned up on a NOAA web site or some other place.
When I went to school, the solar constant was 1353 W/m^2, so I’m still getting used to the 1367 range of numbers. So where can one get access to these channels 5 and 10, and how many channels are there.
Oh I see that there’s some manipulations going on there; so channel 5, wherever it is to be found, is a mythical one AU outpost; I can see that that is a sensible idea; and channel 10, is the unexpurgated version in earth orbit.
I’m catching on; as they say, I may not do very good work, but I sure am slow.
Thanks for the heads up.
George

Leif Svalgaard (16:10:43) :
It does not deviate. The absolute calibration of TSI is hard and different spacecraft instruments disagree. The best modern measurements from TIM on SORCE is about 5 W.m^2 below the ‘normal’ TSI of 1366 because of instrumental differences. The ‘relative error’ [that is the error on any given instrument compared to earlier values from the same instrument] is almost a thousand times better, at the 0.007 W/m^2 level. We know the variation of the TSI value over time better than 0.1 W/m^2.
Nevertheless, the same as it happens with TSI measurements, the statistical reconstruction of fluctuations of temperature in Antarctica depends on the databases obtained from the measurements provided by the stations, the number of stations considered for the reconstruction, the quality of the instruments at those selected stations, the location of those stations, the period considered for measurements, etc., which has been exposed on this article. These are not just measurements, but also interpretations of the measurements.

“”” George E. Smith (14:29:36) :
“”” Stephen Brown (13:08:41) :
“Chris S (04:50:12) :
I await the publication of this after peer review with baited breath”
Erm … Wouldn’t the word “bated” be more appropriate? It’s breathing you are talking about, not fishing!
Your friendly nit-picking pedant. “””
Given that you have people here speaking several languages at once (including me), and the frequent appearance of typos; it is generally not considered Kosher to be too pedantic about incorrect spellings. Mis-usage that does not corrupt the scientific content, is generally regarded as uncouth to comment on. And in the current instance; it is a rather humerous Malapropism.
I once had a very nice Chinese young lady comment that a missing office colleague was out on fraternity leave. As the lady in question was very single; it was an appropriate observation.
George
Reply: Oy, nitpicking about nitpicking, and btw, you misspelled humorous. ~ charles the sometimes anti-semantic moderator. “””
Oh come now Charles ! I know you are much faster on your feet than that.
Or don’t you have a funnybone ? If not what would you call it if you had one ?
GeorgeReply: D’oh! I was severely hungover. There was a contest in SF last night and I knew 3 of the 6 contestants ~ charles the “that’s all you get” mysterious moderator

Leif Svalgaard (16:31:10) :
Get off that 5 W/m^2 difference, it is the ‘normalized’ TSI that is ‘wrong’ by that amount. There is no long-term variation of that magnitude. A single large sunspot can [very rarely] give several W/m^2 signal, but that does not show up in the, say, yearly average.
I know there is not long term variation such as -5 W/m^2 from the normalized TSI. I just was trying to point to the nature of Steig’s error because you said that it was only a measurement, when the interpretation of that measurement was involved.
The maximum deviation from the normalized TSI from your database is -0.154 W/m^2, for example.Sorry if some of my responses are delayed. I’m having problems with my connection…

Name for the AGW hysterics and con artists? Here are some candidates:
Warmageddonists
Warmongers
See-oh-clueless (pun on CO2)
Carboneheads
….Just some practice swings. I’ll try again later. I think it is definitely worth our while to try to re-frame the “narrative.” These people have had a natural advantage here –they are almost wholly concerned with using “science” as an input to produce desired social consequences (in which, typically, they will issue edicts and win fame, love and money). Because they see science as instrument, not an end in itself (in which the integrity of the process is paramount), they begin with the conclusion they want, and then cherrypick, backfill, torture, hide, spin and otherwise make up whatever data and models they need to get the job done.
So anyone who is doing real science is flummoxed by such behavior and is easily outflanked or disgusted. It takes a fundamental re-set of values and strategies to deal effectively with them over the “long march” they typically use (How many years has the AGW story been building? Twenty or so? That’s the bulk of many academic careers, and has given their network the time to spread and set deep roots of tenure, obligation, funding power, tireless publication and symposium-hosting).
So they have had a real edge, and have faced low costs in behaving as they do. We need to raise the cost. Ridicule is a good start.

Looks like the fools at the U of W are on a “team” driven vendetta that simply will not abate ! Here, with the gleeful help of Seattle Times publicity is the latest dish they offer up ….
The tool, called ClimateWizard, allows natural-resource managers, lawmakers, scientists and residents to see historical temperature and precipitation data in their local areas. They also can view projections of how these factors might change as the Earth continues to warm.
Scientists say this tool is the first of its kind to present vast amounts of climate-change information to the public in a way that’s easy to use and understand. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) data used in this tool are already available but often difficult to access and cumbersome to sort through.
“We needed a tool that could bring that data to the desktops of people who can use it,” said Jon Hoekstra, climate-change-program director at the Nature Conservancy, which funded this project. “The power of visualization is extraordinary.”
ClimateWizard is a joint effort among the Nature Conservancy, the University of Washington and the University of Southern Mississippi. It lets users zoom in on specific cities or regions to track temperature and precipitation changes. Maps with color-coded information show where changes are likely to happen, and how severe they could be.
I’m tending to think more and more like the previous poster, offering rational current robust science to counter this stupidity is getting nowhere with regard to the wish to educate the masses, who could then influence our government.

Leif Svalgaard (16:10:43) : “[TSI] does not deviate…The best modern measurements from TIM on SORCE is about 5 W.m^2 below the ‘normal’ TSI of 1366 because of instrumental differences. The ‘relative error’ [that is the error on any given instrument compared to earlier values from the same instrument] is almost a thousand times better, at the 0.007 W/m^2 level. We know the variation of the TSI value over time better than 0.1 W/m^2.”
I hope Ray, Nasif, and George are keeping in mind that TSI is defined based on the average terrestrial distance from the Sun. The Earth is not there, most of the time; consequently, insolation varies about +7.0 /-6.3 percent from perihelion to aphelion. This makes variations in TSI minuscule by comparison, if they weren’t already. Although this should average out over a year, differences between the hemispheres (albedos, ocean mass, usw) make it almost certain that it doesn’t, and probably by a lot more than the putative changes in TSI cited above.

I feel like I’m beating a dead horse here, but,
many sensors are calibrated exterior to the
platform. The cal results are then uplinked to
the sensor. This will affect any future data
collection until new cal results are uplinked.
So, do you trust the people operating the
sensor? Not the people who own it, the ones
who operate it. Additionally, there is a record
of all uplinked data.
Ryan O
A brilliant piece of work.

jorgekafkazar (17:30:32) :I hope Ray, Nasif, and George are keeping in mind that TSI is defined based on the average terrestrial distance from the Sun. The Earth is not there, most of the time; consequently, insolation varies about +7.0 /-6.3 percent from perihelion to aphelion. This makes variations in TSI minuscule by comparison, if they weren’t already. Although this should average out over a year, differences between the hemispheres (albedos, ocean mass, usw) make it almost certain that it doesn’t, and probably by a lot more than the putative changes in TSI cited above.
Which is only valid for the normalized TSI figure, not for the measurements made by multi-instrumental satellites and ground-based observations.

I wish to congratulate Ryan O (and Anthony) for presenting some ‘real’ science. What do I mean by that?
Ryan’s work has been in the open, the methodology, the script, etc. are there on the table with no hidden information. THAT is science or at least a very crucial part of the scientific process. Put all of your cards on the table where others can pick through them to see if the deck was stacked or the cards marked.
A large amount of the ‘confusion’ related to current climate science and understanding of the climate is created not by nature, not by our ability to understand, but rather by the secrecy with which some shroud their research and studies. Most of us seek only truth, only reality, regardless of what they be in reference to our opinion. The truth need not hide in the shadows, the truth need not employ attempts to conceal or distort. Ryan O has done an excellent job of seeking the truth. That does not mean he is necessarily right, but that he has provided an open and unhindered path.
I, again, congratulate Ryan O for his efforts, his ethic, and his integrity.
If Ryan will grant me some quarter I wish to venture in the direction of (part of) Anthony’s work and a related factor.
I recently was pressed into a situation where defense of Anthony and the Surfacestations.org project came under attack. The message board where this occurred handles 8 – 10,000 posts per day. The particular thread in 10 days accumulated 454 posts (not all related to surface stations…. in fact few). However, the thread during the tens days so far has been viewed over 4,500 times (I cannot {easily} say when the viewing occurred or which posts were the point of focus).
What I can say is that every challenge presented was effectively addressed. The means for doing so came not from my personal knowledge but rather from the information that Anthony provided on the site and his openness regarding prosecution of operation and cross checks to ensure quality data / information.
Good science is like an honest deck of cards…. all 52 are on the table. Ryan, Anthony, Jeff, and a few others have the integrity to play with a full deck. They seek truth, nothing more, nothing less.
Again, I thank you.

DaveE (16:05:39) :
George E. Smith (14:18:29) : & Ray (15:31:52) :
I think you’re missing the point Nasif Nahle (13:21:18) : was trying to make.
The -6.13 W/m^2 was I think a hypothetical deviation which would be insignificant if all previous deviations had been the same or there-abouts.
Given that previous deviations were much less, that would then make it significant.
I could of course be wrong. 😉
DaveE
Yes, you’re correct! It’s exactly my idea.

Owen Hughes (17:09:48) “Ridicule is a good start” and John W (17:10:48) with that very clever and funny link ,made me think that we need PR expertise to craft an apt title. It needs to include the term that they throw at us, ‘deniers’. It has been used before but ‘Natural Climate Change Deniers’ is clumsy but on the right track.
Any true believers from Advertising Agencies out there willing to help?

Lee Kington (18:36:59) :
You are of course correct.
This review, paper or whatever you want to call it is open to review with all data & methods open to make it replicable.
This is in stark contrast to the gang-green who hide their methods & data in an effort to bamboozle.
I cannot lay claim to gang-green but forget to whom it is attributable.
DaveE

Sir, I must object.
Despite the simple fact that this article is about the south polar temperatures and despite the fact that it has images of heat and cold, you refused to take my fine advice and title such an article “Halle Berry hot images of Antarctica”.
So here we are with adverts for some Centerspace Math Lab library, when for darned near no effort on your part we could have ads for Halle Berry
Clearly you care not one whit for your audience.
How could you!

Keith Minto (20:03:33) :
It needs to include the term that they throw at us, ‘deniers’. It has been used before but ‘Natural Climate Change Deniers’ is clumsy but on the right track.
It’s just the way you say it.
Fire Hot!
Ice Cold!
Climate Change!
Maybe add a picture of this guy.http://redwoodr.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/caveman.jpg

Ryan, I would have to agree with George. I would suggest you consider a slight revision here. Your work here is fantastic! And, it deserves to utilize the full brunt of the “significance” of your findings. Please consider George’s words, I believe he is on to something important here and I would like to see you gain from the full impact of this fine piece. I see nothing insignificant about this writing at all, it is truly a very fine piece of work!
my 2 cents

Anthony’s REPLY to Benjamin P. @ 07:24:49
Where or who is the official climate zone designator? As far as I know someone writes a few papers and then publishes a map with their view of the world. Just because two or three of these have been done and used repeatedly for explanatory and teaching purposes does not make them correct or official. None were focusing on Antarctica when they did their work.
So design you map. Get a fresh design by a computer pro and e-mail to the Association of American Geographers and ask them to send the link out to all their specialty groups that might be interested. Then send it to all those with current earth science textbooks on the market and give them permission to use it in the next edition.
Task accomplished.

Nasif Nahle (16:56:57) :I just was trying to point to the nature of Steig’s error because you said that it was only a measurement, when the interpretation of that measurement was involved.
No, not at all. There is no interpretation when it comes to TSI. There is simply an not understood measurement error. The Steig analogy would be that some temperatures were measured wrong in the first place, perhaps with thermometers that were leaking or such. In such a situation you correct the error once you have decided what it is and how best to correct it. You do not interpret the faulty data once you know they are faulty.

I like Gullible Warmers. (I don’t know who came up with that one.)
As others have mentioned already, they should not be let off with the fact that they all started out as global warmers but are now climate changers. They must have started covering their behinds when they realised that things were starting to cool down.

Stephen Brown (13:08:41) :
“Chris S (04:50:12) :
I await the publication of this after peer review with baited breath”
Erm … Wouldn’t the word “bated” be more appropriate? It’s breathing you are talking about, not fishing!
Your friendly nit-picking pedant.”
As you-all have led us off topic may I suggest you read this:http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-bai1.htm

Leif Svalgaard (16:10:43) : “[TSI] does not deviate…The best modern measurements from TIM on SORCE is about 5 W.m^2 below the ‘normal’ TSI of 1366 because of instrumental differences. The ‘relative error’ [that is the error on any given instrument compared to earlier values from the same instrument] is almost a thousand times better, at the 0.007 W/m^2 level. We know the variation of the TSI value over time better than 0.1 W/m^2.”
Then if the error is of only 0.1 W/m^2, then it should be 1366.0 W/m^2.

Chip,
I can only suggest the bleedin obvious:
The “Prophets of Doom” (or Pod if you like).
BTW wuwters pls do not rubbish us poor geriatric cruisers. Most have a very broad view of the world and many have seen places that some wuwters could only dream of.
I think is is also ironic that a cruise ship sank not too long ago in the Antarctic by hitting ice, amazingly without any loss of life! Had there been deaths, I think it would have been a wake up call for people to realise that it is not a place that you go snorkelling:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7108835.stm

My 2 cents, for what it is worth. I have a MS in stats. I follow the calculations. But I do not care for Principal Component Analysis. I do not believe reliable inferences can be made using that methodology.
The magnitude of the alleged temperature change, whether Steig’s or Ryan’s, is below detectable limits. The measurement error exceeds hundredths of a degree per decade.
Lack of statistical significance means that the statistic is not different from zero. The actual change may be positive or negative. It therefore remains highly debatable whether Antarctica has warmed, or cooled, over the period analyzed.
All reconstructions had a positive sign. That would be a potentially significant finding, if the values were different than zero (that is, if they exceeded the measurement error). But they do not. In my opinion, the best that can be said is that using the (questionable) method, no trend was detected.
Warming is neither confirmed nor rejected. There is no smoking gun one way or the other. Uncertainty prevails. Nobody’s agenda is served; nothing is bunked or debunked. In my opinion.
But kudos for the attempt.

Ron de Haan (06:20:46) :
OT but important:
A Forum led by Koffee Anan will publish a report this week stating 300.000 climate casualties per year.

Because everything is connected. We are one connected people, and if they are suffering over there, it is because of our individual actions over here. Or at least that’s the grand-narrative/picture they want us to see.
But whilst it is true that we are all connected, that doesn’t mean the effects on another part of the planet can be traced and linked back to my individual actions.
If everyone’s individual actions make a difference and have an effect on everything and everyone else, that means everybody’s actions are combined in unpredictable and complex ways, which means that no global effect can be traced back to anyone in particular. So yes, my actions have effects on the whole world, but those effects are completely unpredictable.
The belief that that my actions “cause” global warming, or “cause” famines, or “cause” extinctions, has been said by psychologists to constitute a massive ego trip for the individual and their sense of omnipotence. The idea that a tiny trace gas causes global warming, is so believable because people already believe something very similar–that a tiny action on my part causes world famines. Unplug that mobile phone charger to save the planet!
The counter-argument that CO2 is just one variable in a highly complex system, is just like the argument to inflated egos, ie. that people should remember some humility. The reality is that their personal actions are just one tiny small part in the complex of billions of people and multiple ecosystems and cultures on the planet. But we’ve just got 4 years to save the planet! Most people can’t stick to a diet for that long, let alone change the course of planetary history. One would say this more often, but that would deflate the ego somewhat…

I’m nominating Ian Plimer for quote of the week:IT is well known that many university staff list to port and try to engineer a brave new world. The cash cow climate institutes now seem to be drowning in their own self-importance.. The rest of the article can be found here:http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25552775-7583,00.html
PS I’m still waiting for my copy of his book. If anyone has Plimer’s e-mail address can you ask him to lean on the publishers for another reprint.

(14:29:36) :
Reply: Oy, nitpicking about nitpicking, and btw, you misspelled humorous. ~ charles the sometimes anti-semantic moderator.
Lots of anti-semanticism going around these days, and we grammar-n*zi’s fight the good fight. For the spelling errors, I recommend downloading the Firefox browser, which has a built-in spell checker.
Also sorry to hear some among us have nits.
On Topic, any chance of an explanation of what the “regpar” value does?

Anthony,as a layman, with only a very basic science background, it seems to me that efforts on this site and others have shot many holes in the hot air balloon and it must be in deep trouble.
What exactly does it take to appeal to those with a science background who still feel that our influence on the climate will have catastrophic results ?
What is the state of the play ?
I know that the general public put global warming/climate change very low on their list of concerns, but who speaks for science and how does a layman know which way the scientific community is bending ?

Let me make two philo-semantic observations.
1. To wait with ‘bated breath’ means, literally, to be holding ones breath in anxious anticipation. The verb ‘bate’, which has become obsolete except in this expression, has a living first cousin in the verb ‘abate’, meaning ‘lessen’.
2. The Latin abbreviation ‘et al’ stands for ‘et alii’, ‘and others’. In academia, these ‘alii’ are usually indentured servants known as graduate students who have done most of the gruntwork for the Immortals who are recognized by name as the authors.

I was too busy yesterday to keep up, so this morning I start reading from the end forward, and was very intrigued by the discussion over “statistically significant” attributed to a comment from Leif. Eventually, I got to it. Leif Svalgaard (10:20:43) :
while I generally agree with Ryan’s result and think his post is very good, I do have a slight problem with this statement:
“Overall, Antarctica has warmed from 1957-2006. There is no debating that point. (However, other than the Peninsula, the warming is not statistically significant)”
A measurement is a measurement and is not in itself ’statistically significant’ or not. If I measure the temperature outside and it is 67.2F, that is what it is and it carries no statistical significance as that is a concept that does not apply here. The significance comes in if you compare the measured value to its ‘expected’ value and want to argue that it is significantly different than the observed spread in such differences. So, one may ask what the expected value for the Antarctic would be and what the observed spread is.
Leif, I understand your basic point, but question whether it is the whole story here. Over time, temperature varies. Sometimes we think we see a trend in the variation. It is commonplace to measure whether the trend, or change, is “statistically significant” by comparison to an “expected value” based on the mean. When I read a statement like “However, other than the Peninsula, the warming is not statistically significant” I would assume that Ryan simply meant that any trend is not significantly different than the mean (a flat line).
Without going back and looking to see if this is truly the case or not, my impression from a quick read was that by lowering the computed change, we were now down to a number not significantly different than the mean.

Mike D. (01:38:00) :Warming is neither confirmed nor rejected.
Your are correct on several points IMHO. First, there appears to be a slight warming which is robust to reasonable methods. Area weighted surface calcs show about 0.05C/decade. Personally, I consider this to be the best accuracy we can create so far.
This trend is upward for a short section based on very few stations back prior to 1967 which places them at the sensitive endpoint of a LS fit. After that the Antarctic has cooled and I’m told if the start point is slightly before 1957 the Anarctic was warmer than today which would probably change the trend again If we started there.
As far as agenda, I don’t care if the Antarctic is warming as I don’t have any climate computer models I’ve devoted my life to designing. The current models ‘apparently’ predict significant warming in the Antarctic based on evil CO2. This is an extremely important point for AGW as if the Antarctic won’t melt, the flood disasters don’t happen. It is critical to AGW that the Antarctic melts. Without rebuttal, this paper and those which Dr. Steig claimed at RC are being developed by others will be the new poster children for the IPCC.
They know the temps aren’t even close to melting the ice but the papers can proclaim warming (already have) so people will a priori ‘know’ it’s coming.
AGW has placed the burden of proof on the rational rather than the extremist predictions. How else does the highest trend ever published (that I know of) for the Antarctic become the cover of Nature?
The fact that the squiggle has a slight linear least squares uptrend obscures that there is a 40 year downtrend during the highest CO2 portion of the graph. The downtrend is outside of model predictions (as stated today apparently) and is longer than the uptrend. Steig et al, mashes, blends and crushes the numbers into a continuous uptrend – consistent with models as Gavin stated in celebration when this paper was acclaimed on RC.
So my long winded comment is getting to the point that in fact any reasonable Antarctic temperature math contradicts predicted CO2 based warming. It also ruins the AGW’s most serious disaster point of FLOODING. After all, no melt, no flood. Finally, it contradicts most computer models, demonstrating yet another weakness in what most of us already know is oversimplified and often flawed math.
The frustrating part is that even if climatology rejects this unreasonable paper outright (as it should), gavin and modelers will just shift positions. Models will again show local cooling followed by doom-filled warming. Pinning a modeler down is like putting a railroad spike through a jar of jelly on a hot day – mush.

“Additionally, Steig shows whole-continent warming from 1967-2006; this analysis shows that most of the continent has cooled from 1967-2006. Given that the 1940’s were significantly warmer in the Antarctic than 1957 (the 1957-1960 period was unusually cold in the Antarctic), focusing on 1957 can give a somewhat slanted picture of the temperature trends in the continent.”
– So, what does a temp reconstruction starting in 1940 look like?

Ray (23:54:11) :Then if the error is of only 0.1 W/m^2, then it should be 1366.0 W/m^2.
No, the error is 5 W/m^2 [or some number close to that]. Once you correct the error, the variation becomes very small. The error is such that before SORCE all spacecraft data were adjusted to ACRIM at 1366 or some number like that. Now that we know [from SORCE] that the ‘true’ number is more like 1361, all other spacecraft TSIs should be adjusted to that mean by subtracting 5, only then can you begin to compare them. And if you do compare the adjusted values you’ll find that they vary very little with time, like 1 W/m^2 from solar min to solar max, and that that variation is accurate to about 0.1 W/m^2.

Basil (05:40:38) :I would assume that Ryan simply meant that any trend is not significantly different than the mean (a flat line).
I don’t think I’m coming across at all. Any trend is correct and significant. If I measure 10 today and 9 last year, the measured trend is 10-9 = +1 and is significant and real. The only question is whether that trend is different from the expected trend and “The significance comes in if you compare the measured value to its ‘expected’ value and want to argue that it is significantly different than the observed spread in such differences. So, one may ask what the expected value for the Antarctic would be and what the observed spread is.”
If you believe AGW is bunk and that the trend SHOULD be zero, then you can only argue that the observed trend is significantly different from zero if you know what the observed spread is, which we may or may not know. But I think that Ryan has already admitted that his statement was internally contradictory so perhaps no need to beat that dead horse.
Another way to obscure the debate is to question how to measure ‘the trend’. Over what interval of time? 30 years, 10 years, whatever? And here people tend to pick a value that fits their need.

Because direct heat flux measurements in ice-covered regions are difficult to obtain, we developed a method that uses satellite magnetic data to estimate the heat flux underneath the Antarctic ice sheet. We found that the heat flux underneath the ice sheet varies from 40 to 185 megawatts per square meter and that areas of high heat flux coincide with known current volcanism and some areas known to have ice streams.

Heat Flux Anomalies in Antarctica Revealed by Satellite Magnetic Data Cathrine Fox Maule, Michael E. Purucker, Nils Olsen, Klaus Mosegaard, Science Express on 9 June 2005; Science 15 July 2005: Vol. 309. no. 5733, pp. 464 – 467 DOI: 10.1126/science.1106888
Contrast the Insolation reported by NASA
For example, picking Paulet Volcano at -67.5 (S) to -52.5 (W), the insolation ranges from 511 W/m2 to 7 W/m2 (Average about 259 W/m2.)
From Maule’s abstract, the typical geothermal flux reported is about 112 MW/m2 compared to this insolation example of 259 W/m2.
Ryan O clearly shows a statistically significant higher temperature in the West Antarctica Peninsula compared to continental Antarctica.Can typical geothermal fluxes 430,000 times greater than the solar insolation be detected as an increase in temperature in the West Antarctica Peninsula?
If so, can this peninsular temperature anomaly be statistically attributable to volcanic activity over the climatic change claimed by Steig et al?
Obviously Paulet volcano is ice free. What might the influence of the underlying geothermal flux be over the whole West Antarctica Peninsula?
Anyone up to some detailed Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling to model and explore these different sources? (There is probably a PhD thesis or two buried in there somewhere.)

Chip’s Menken Quote is one of my favorites.Not a big fan of Menken but he got off some astute observations…
This whole Antarctic exercise strikes me as the Warmist’s looking for that Christmas Pony, and not finding one in the pile of Horse manure…

The semantics of “statistically insignificant” (or not) has to be unequivocally resolved. It may be the most important sentence in Ryan’s analysis.
Here’s why: The competent scientists and mathematicians among us can read through the analysis and derive the truth of the statement. Not so the lay public, and especially the reporters of various mass media around the planet.
Most of the latter will skim the details for what they believe are catch phrases that summarize what the unintelligible analysis (to them) is saying. They will then take those phrases and weave them into whatever prose-bias they are selling – tailored to market.
Reporters and journalists sell a product; they do not simply report an observation (scientists used to do this, many do not now either). Their talent is wordsmithing, and they make a living at it, so they are good at it. Content is frequently only incidental to the product.
Its a sad reality that knowledge of a paper’s content will be far more widely disseminated based on the common language in it than the actual technical analysis. Hence, “the Antarctic is warming!”.
While the discussion about “statistically insignificant” may seem arcane to the eigenheads aboard, it is fundamentally important to the broader acceptance of the analysis.

Ayrdale (05:08:23) :
“What exactly does it take to appeal to those with a science background who still feel that our influence on the climate will have catastrophic results ?
What is the state of the play ?”
We are about to see the second brick thrown (first by Ian Plimer) by none other than Nicolas Sarkozy President of France who is on the verge of appointing renowned geophysicist Claude Allegre – one of France’s most celebrated scientists, a socialist leader and one-time climate alarmist – to a new environmental post. Allegre is an alarmist no more having recanted his position two years ago:http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2f4cc62e-5b0d-4b59-8705-fc28f14da388&p=1
It appears as though France in her choice to adopt nuclear energy on a mass scale some thirty years ago – has trumped most western nations’ goal of energy independence. And will do so again by recognizing AGW as a thinly veiled money/power grab by faux-green misanthropes.

I did ask the study’s authors. Eric Steig of the University of Washington replied:
Wow. Strange question.
Volcanoes under the ice can’t affect climate on the surface, 2 miles above!

Hmm. Somehow I don’t think Steig thought through the problem.
Assuming a one dimensional heat transfer problem, the temperature at the surface will be controlled by the upward geothermal flux, downward solar insolation, outward surface radiation and conductive and convective heat losses to the air. From that mix, somehow I think that 2 miles will have very little to do with the answer when compared to compared to a mantel thickness of about 1500 miles. I expect that there will be a detectable temperature rise. The question is how much. That will primarily depend on the geothermal flux distribution relative to convection.

mae culpa. The mantel has little to do with it. Geothermal flux will be melting the ice and hold that bottom temperature close to 0 deg C.
The peninsula temperature varies from -5 deg C to -25 deg C depending on location and summer/winter.

Leif Svalgaard (22:07:49) :
No, not at all. There is no interpretation when it comes to TSI. There is simply an not understood measurement error.
Which was corrected by simply substracting 5 W/m^2 from each measurement after comparing the results with other sources. Perhaps the errors were due to Plamaspheric Hiss, or perhaps to a careless engineering, we don’t know.The Steig analogy would be that some temperatures were measured wrong in the first place, perhaps with thermometers that were leaking or such. In such a situation you correct the error once you have decided what it is and how best to correct it. You do not interpret the faulty data once you know they are faulty.
Steig’s methodology was wrong, so I agree on the first assertion. Regarding the bolded paragraph, there are exceptions, especially if an agenda or a dense belief is behind.

I have read the posts above with interest. In my opinion, the discussion of AGW has moved from the scientific to the political. Not that scientific work does not continue, it is just that the damage is being done in the policy sphere where, as Henry Waxman so aptly put it, they really don’t know what’s in the legislation.
I support the good fight with actual data and real observations that are based on systems that are not corrupt. However, in order to be effective in opposing the draconian changes in the pipeline, I believe we must resist effectively in the political sphere. The Heartland series is a great beginning. I have seen numerous mentions of it, if only to denigrate it. But even the denigrations are positive. In my previous life in marketing I knew that you never mention the competition because all you do is bring attention to their product. Such mentions by name are usually an indication that the competition’s efforts are being effective and are undermining the value of your brand.
It is in this light that I cited the ‘framing’ paper. The AGW camp wants to ‘name and shame’ us. By disputing these names we remain on the defensive. By ‘naming and shaming’ them we take the offensive and force them to respond. The importance of the framing paper lies in the authors emphasis on the emotional content of the words chosen. It is not adequate from this standpoint to simply label AGW’ers ‘poo-poo heads’ or some such, because the meaning evokes the wrong emotions in the listener. Instead, the name must be carefully thought out to provoke a response in the public that matches AGW’ers potential for damage to personal liberty.
I am not saying that Puritans is the perfect word. In my opinion it is a strong one because it provokes an image of intolerance, fanatical devotion to a religious cause, inflexibility, arrogance, and hypocrisy. I apologize here to the person whose ancestors were Puritans – I beieve their strengths led in large part to the success of America and our unique national character. But I beieve the current meaning to the average person at this point is a negative one for the reasons I laid out. It is anathema to those in the AGW camp.
That the emotional content fits AGW’ers actions is a plus. Al Gore urges us to live a spartan existence, but owns a houseboat to rival the barge of a Pharaoh. He flies everywhere, presumably because his presence is urgently needed – are you telling me the father of the internet can’t figure out a conference call? Barack Obama tells us we will have to be happy with less while spewing carbon out the back of Air Force One on a publicity shoots. EU MPs want to limit airfare and then jet by the thousands to vacations spots for confabs where they enjoy lobster bisque and finger sandwiches while they deciding how to constrain energy. I ask one simple question – if their goal was to destroy the west and industrialized civilization, how would they behave differently?
These days I am a math teacher in a public school while I finish my doctorate. Gore’s strategy of sending millions of free DVD’s to teachers was an act of genius – teachers love new things they can show their kids. But I can tell you that there is hope. The kids are looking for reassurance from adults. I educate them on the falsity of relative risk studies and they feel better about the avalanche of things they’ve heard will cause them to get cancer, shorten their lives, or God forbid put on weight. There has never been a better time to be a kid in the entire history of the world and they need to hear that. So carry on the good fight, please. Anthony and Steve (sorry for the first name basis, but you may as well be family at this point) and others like the late great John Daly give me encouragement, and better yet ammunition, to carry the fight to the forces of darkness and ignorance (and I use these words every carefully becuase that is exactly what I believe we are fighting here). I just encourage everyone to take action in the public sphere as well to whatever extent they can. Please.

Everyone,
Leif is correct. My statement was inaccurate. The reconstruction trend using a linear model and OLS IS positive. Not “may be positive”; not “a 75% chance it is positive”; it IS positive. There is no ambiguity there. Whether you calculate it in MatLab, R, Excel, or graph it by hand, using a linear model and OLS, the trend IS positive.
Leif’s point is that my statement of statistical significance does not apply to the trend itself, it applies when comparing the trend to something else. In this case, that point of comparison – or the null hypothesis – is that the population has a zero trend.
The statement of statistical significance means, based on the number of degrees of freedom (as yet uncorrected for serial autocorrelation) and the resulting R^2 value from a linear fit to the data and the assumption that said residuals are gaussian, that there is more than a 2.5% chance that the “real” trend is zero. Remember that the trend is calculated from a sample of the population. The sample trend may not equal the population trend.
This means that while the observed trend (calculated from the sample) is not zero, the real trend (the actual trend of the entire population) has some finite chance of being zero or less.

Nasif Nahle (08:57:51) :Perhaps the errors were due to Plamaspheric Hiss, or perhaps to a careless engineering, we don’t know.
No careless stuff there. This is just a difficult measurement, but we are getting better at it with time. Now the precision is measured in parts per million and we have to worry about such things as calculating the Sun-Earth distance not when the observation is made but 8 minutes earlier when the photons actually left the sun. [I actually have an argument with the experimenters that they should use half of that, i.e. 4 minutes, but that is another story]

For a change I managed to follow the statistics and therefore found the article very convincing. But when I tried to find out more about Ryan O – except for earlier papers, the GPS and his possible connection with the University of the West Indies – I was stymied. The same applied for Steven Goddard a couple of weeks ago. It would be helpful if those who produce such excellent work were less shy about their profiles and let you or another site publish them.
The fact that their profiles are so difficult to find permits the deniers blogs to query not only their qualifications but even their existence.[REPLY – It was even rumored that St. God. and I are one and the same. (Also that neither one of us existed.) ~ Evan]

Leif Svalgard;
“If you believe AGW is bunk and that the trend SHOULD be zero, then you can only argue that the observed trend is significantly different from zero if you know what the observed spread is, which we may or may not know.”
Sorry, but this is NON Sequitur, because there could be GW which is not AGW. Problem is that proponents of AGW first dismissed cooling on Antarctica as argument against AGWon the basis that models showed “exactly that”, and then still performed this Hockey-stick like fine tuning to “prove” warming, claiming that warming now was exactly what models predicted.
“Another way to obscure the debate is to question how to measure ‘the trend’. Over what interval of time? 30 years, 10 years, whatever? And here people tend to pick a value that fits their need.”
Only if you chose (should I say cherry-pick) relatively cold years 1957-1965 you obtain slight warming. With any other start data after that and very likely before that (because 1930s and 1940s were likely much warmer than 1950s on Antarctica) you obtain cooling. So, situation with Antarctica is crystal clear – exactly according to your own criterion that every trend measured is significant, you have long-term cooling trend, except you cherry pick exceptionally cold years 1957-1965 as your starting point.

This is probably off topic, but interesting nonetheless:http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/05/astronauts-spot-mysterious-ice-circles-in-worlds-deepest-lake/
Astronauts aboard the International Space Station noticed two mysterious dark circles in the ice of Russia’s Lake Baikal in April. Though the cause is more likely aqueous than alien, some aspects of the odd blemishes defy explanation.
The two circles are the focal points for ice break-up and may be caused by upwelling of warmer water in the lake. The dark color of the circles is due to thinning of the ice, which usually hangs around into June. Upwelling wouldn’t be strange in some relatively shallow areas of the lake where hydrothermal activity has been detected, such as where the circle near the center of the lake (pictured below) is located. Circles have been seen in that area before in 1985 and 1994, though they weren’t nearly as pronounced. But the location of the circle near the southern tip of the lake (pictured above) where water is relatively deep and cold is puzzling.
The lake itself is an oddity. It is the largest by volume and the deepest (5370 feet at its deepest point), as well as one of the oldest at around 25 million years. The photo above was taken by an astronaut from the ISS. The photo below was taken by NASA’s MODIS satellite instrument.

Leif Svalgaard (10:04:24) :
…Sun-Earth distance not when the observation is made but 8 minutes earlier when the photons actually left the sun. [I actually have an argument with the experimenters that they should use half of that, i.e. 4 minutes, but that is another story]
I’d like to know what your argument is. It sounds interesting; at least for me because I’ve been digging a little on the solar photon stream and some kind of interactions between photons and molecules.

Solomon Green (10:27:11) :
[…]The fact that their profiles are so difficult to find permits the deniers blogs to query not only their qualifications but even their existence.
And your point would be? While ascribing blame or credit is appropriate, its the content that matters, not the authorship. It should be about the science (or math, or stats, as the case may be). We already have the problem where the authorship is taking precedence over the content. Currently, its called “anthropogenic global warming”, and its promulgated by such authors as Al Gore, James Hansen, Michael Mann, The IPCC, ad nauseum, and even, it appears, Dr. Steig and the journal Nature. We probably won’t know who the actual first person who discovered the earth was round (more or less…), but the important thing is we don’t fall off the edge, isn’t it? As I recall, the IPCC of the day insisted it was flat…

“Nasif Nahle (13:02:52) :
Leif Svalgaard (10:04:24) :
…Sun-Earth distance not when the observation is made but 8 minutes earlier when the photons actually left the sun. [I actually have an argument with the experimenters that they should use half of that, i.e. 4 minutes, but that is another story]
I’d like to know what your argument is. It sounds interesting; at least for me because I’ve been digging a little on the solar photon stream and some kind of interactions between photons and molecules.”
I’m equally interested as to why not the point at which the stream is measured as surely that is the actual distance travelled.
DaveE

David L. Hagen (07:56:02) :
We found that the heat flux underneath the ice sheet varies from 40 to 185 megawatts per square meter and that areas of high heat flux coincide with known current volcanism and some areas known to have ice streams.
Nataf and Ricard found it was 43 mW/m^2. The evaluation made by Maule et al is correct; it’s just that it’s wider than Nataf-Ricard’s evaluation. The average of geothermal heat flux over the whole Earth is ≈85 mW/m^2.
The units megaWatts/square meter are correct for geothermal flux of energy underneath the ice crust. It’s a hilly amount of heat.

Hahaha… I made the same mistake!
The units megaWatts/square meter are correct for geothermal flux of energy underneath the ice crust. It’s a hilly amount of heat.
Wrong! It should have said:
The units milliWatts/square meter are correct for geothermal flux of energy underneath the ice crust. It’s a hilly amount of heat.
I’m so sorry! 🙂

chip (09:20:43) : “…in order to be effective in opposing the draconian changes in the pipeline, I believe we must resist effectively in the political sphere.
“By ‘naming and shaming’ them we take the offensive and force them to respond…In my opinion [Puritans] is a strong [term] because it provokes an image of intolerance, fanatical devotion to a religious cause, inflexibility, arrogance, and hypocrisy….
“Al Gore urges us to live a spartan existence, but owns a houseboat to rival the barge of a Pharaoh…I ask one simple question – if their goal was to destroy the west and industrialized civilization, how would they behave differently?
“…I just encourage everyone to take action in the public sphere as well to whatever extent they can. Please.”
Well, you’re right, of course. The power of using loaded words for propaganda can’t be dismissed. The term “Denialist” was chosen with deliberate malice by the Warmist Weather Willies. I’ve captured all sixty of the suggested dysphemisms for “AGW proponent.” Perhaps a prize would be in order for the most popular? Or is that too much like a consensus? Maybe I should just pick the one(s) I like. Let me think about it and await any input from Anthony.

Ivan (11:50:25) :
We could make 1000 years ago a starting point. Starting points are an issue.
But I think everyone can, or at least should, agree that manmade co2 is rising rapidly, faster than was predicted it would, yet global temperatures are in a cooling trend.

Ivan (11:50:25) :Problem is that proponents of AGW first dismissed cooling on Antarctica as argument against AGWon the basis that
Who cares what they think or dismiss? Reasonable analysis [as Ryan’s] should be predicated on what some people think. The data speak for themselves.
DaveE (13:18:27) :
“Nasif Nahle (13:02:52) :I’m equally interested as to why not the point at which the stream is measured as surely that is the actual distance travelled.
Our intuitive notion of distance travelled becomes a little fuzzy when it comes to things travelling at the speed of light. The problem is this: It is reasonably thought that intensity of light falls of with the distance squared. But which distance? For a photon the distance is zero [relativistic contraction]. For us [the observer] the photon leaves the Sun at a certain time interval before we see the photon, which we calculate to be the distance to the Sun divided by the speed of light = ~500 seconds [if the orbit was circular]. As the photon speeds toward us, we are also changing our distance to the Sun [because the orbit is an ellipse], either moving towards the photon or away from it. Say towards the Sun, so after 500 seconds the photon will have zoomed past us already as we have now moved closer. I admit that my argument about the 4 minutes is not well expressed, simply because I can’t figure out precisely what it should be as these things are tricky and counterintuitive. Perhaps some reader can think this through and educate us. I feel in my bones that the 8 minutes is not right, but can’t really explain why. My point was that our measurements of TSI are now so precise that we need to worry about such exotic details.

Leif Svalgaard (16:30:29) : Your comment is awaiting moderation
Ivan (11:50:25) :
Problem is that proponents of AGW first dismissed cooling on Antarctica as argument against AGWon the basis that
Who cares what they think or dismiss? Reasonable analysis [as Ryan’s] should NOT be predicated on what some people think. The data speak for themselves.
Perhaps a moderator can catch this….

Leif Svalgaard (16:30:29) :
DaveE (13:18:27) :
“Nasif Nahle (13:02:52) :I’m equally interested as to why not the point at which the stream is measured as surely that is the actual distance travelled.
More on this: When we observe the photon at Earth [or to be precise at the satellite – because we also must take into account the varying distance due to the satellite’s orbit around what ever body it is orbiting] let the Earth [and the photon] be at position X1, Y1, Z1 [one can now begin to discuss in which coordinate system…]. When the photon left the Sun [8 minutes ago], the Sun [and the photon] was at position X0, Y0, Z0 [in the same coordinate system…calculated for a time 8 minutes earlier than the time when the photon was observed]. One could then calculate the distance travelled as D = SQRT((X1-X0)^2+(Y1-Y0)^2+(Z1-Z0)^2), and calculate ‘real’ TSI as ‘real’ TSI = ‘observed’ TSI * D^2, if D is expressed in Astronomical Units [very, very nearly the semi-major axis of the Earth’s orbit – but not quite – other story]. This is the argument the TSI-folks use. But why does TSI fall off with the square of D? The quick argument goes like this: imagine two spheres with different radius both with their center at the center of the Sun, then the number of photons though the outer sphere should be equal to the number of photons through the inner sphere, hence fall off as D squared [if we put the inner sphere as radius = 1]. Except that D [as calculated above] does not seem to me to be the radius of an outer sphere centered on the Sun defined by the position of all photons that left the Sun [forget for the moment about the complication that the Sun is not a point source] at time D/c [with the origin of time being when the photon was observed]. At this point my head begins to spin and I’m lose the train of thought. Suffice, perhaps, it to say that the very fact that our precision of TSI measurements is so high that we need even to worry about this shows us what tremendous strides we have made the last thirty years.

Leif Svalgaard (17:09:17) :Leif Svalgaard (16:30:29) :
DaveE (13:18:27) :
“Nasif Nahle (13:02:52) :
I’m equally interested as to why not the point at which the stream is measured as surely that is the actual distance travelled.
More on this: …
I’m still just thinking out loud here, so bear with me. I’m trying to understand this myself, and have the hubris to believe that somebody else might be interested in my thoughts… [or spot the error(s), if any].
As I read the description of how the TSI-experts calculate D I think they say: “We calculate the distance, D, between the Sun and the Earth at time T-8 minutes [the ‘8’ varies slightly though the year] and multiply the TSI measured at time T by D^2 to correct TSI for the distance to the Sun”. This seems fishy, but I can’t put my finger on the flaw [if any]. It seems to me that since the Earth has moved in the meantime that D must be different from the value calculated as described. Or perhaps I misunderstood what they said or meant. It may come down to looking at the actual code. [I might want to do that while at the SPD-meeting in Boulder next month].

Leif Svalgaard (17:22:13) :
Your musings brought to mind a question I have been struggling to wrap my brain around for some time and as it is somewhat related, if only very tangentially, to what you were discussing I was hoping you might help me find the hole in my logic. Every time I see another story about how the Hubble has discovered another celestial body Xteen billion lightyears distant and the light it is capturing originated shortly after the Big Bang I have a hard time resolving the paradox. From what I understand of the Big Bang, which is obviously precious little, all the “stuff” that makes up our cozy little solar system was also back in the vicinity of the Big Bang and beginning its’ long journey to the vicinity we now occupy traveling at a speed that is extremely fast, but nowhere near the speed of light. It seems to me that if we and the light both left from nearly the same place, the light would have whistled through here long ago and be well on its way out of the universe, but the Hubble is obviously observing something, and as I said, I can’t get my mind around what it is. Probably the main reason theoretical physics was neer a viable vocational path for me.

Dave Wendt (19:50:42) :occupy traveling at a speed that is extremely fast, but nowhere near the speed of light. It seems to me that if we and the light both left from nearly the same place, the light would have whistled through here long ago and be well on its way out of the universe, but the Hubble is obviously observing something

The light speed limit is for travelling through space, but does not apply to the speed with which space itself expands. There is no limit on that. The light from where we came from is indeed far from us [like 13 billion light years], but we are just seeing light from other places.

Just Want Truth… (09:16:36) :
RE: Henrik Svensmark on Global Warming, Part I
Is there a Part II? Maybe it is there that Svensmark attributes some of his thinking to predecessors? I alway wonder what part of his work merits the claims of “new theory”, since (I believe) others have referred to a sun / cosmic ray / climate connection.

Oh dear.
I may have misunderstood the problem but if not lets start from the beginning.
The earth travels in an elliptical orbit around the sun.
If we treat the sun as a point source, which it is not, we could construct a two dimensional model or plot which would show, based on the change in the distance from the the sun to the power of two, the incident e/m radiation we would receive if the solar output of e/m radiation was constant.
Of course the speed of light, which is a bit less then the speed of light, is enormous compared to the speeds of motion of the heavenly bodies.
Even so it takes around eight minutes for the light from the sun to reach us.
Thus the TSI we receive is eight minutes late but makes no difference to us. What we see is what we get as it were.
However suppose the sun’s output of e/m radiation varies very quickly over a very short period: seconds rather than minutes.
Can we measure this?
Yes of course.
We know where we are now in the orbit and what the TSI is at the moment.
We know where we were eight minutes ago and what the TSI was as we recorded it then.
To measure the variation we only need to take the TSI as we see it now and adjust it by the change in the orbit by distance to the second power and then compare that result to what we measured back then: to know what the change in solar output was in those eight minutes.
And a fat lot of good it will do you: IMHO.
The errors in the calculation are far greater than the measurement, the sun is not a point source and so on.
I do not say you cannot calculate all this but why would you want to?
The astronomers who deal with real point sources and vast distances worked out all this years ago.
Without any need for computers or statistical analysis.
So I am bemused , baffled and bewildered.
Kindest Regards

a jones (21:02:03) :To measure the variation we only need to take the TSI as we see it now and adjust it by the change in the orbit by distance to the second power and then compare that result to what we measured back then: to know what the change in solar output was in those eight minutes.
It is not the change in solar output that is important [because it is probably too small], but the fact that in eight minutes the distance changes so much that the change in TSI just due to the change in distance is greater than the measurement error. And you slipped in the word ‘distance’ there, but the distance computed when is the issue. Since the 8 minutes is not really 8 minutes all the time, but varies between 8:10.6 min and 8:27.4 min, not taking it into account introduces an annual variation of TSI which is actually observed. So, the ‘oh dear’ is a bit misplaced. There is a real effect, and a real problem.

Leif Svalgaard (17:09:17) :
DaveE (13:18:27) :
“Nasif Nahle (13:02:52) :
When we observe the photon at Earth [or to be precise at the satellite – because we also must take into account the varying distance due to the satellite’s orbit around what ever body it is orbiting] let the Earth [and the photon] be at position X1, Y1, Z1 [one can now begin to discuss in which coordinate system…]. When the photon left the Sun [8 minutes ago], the Sun [and the photon] was at position X0, Y0, Z0 [in the same coordinate system…calculated for a time 8 minutes earlier than the time when the photon was observed]. One could then calculate the distance travelled as D = SQRT((X1-X0)^2+(Y1-Y0)^2+(Z1-Z0)^2), and calculate ‘real’ TSI as ‘real’ TSI = ‘observed’ TSI * D^2, if D is expressed in Astronomical Units [very, very nearly the semi-major axis of the Earth’s orbit – but not quite – other story]…
I think I got the idea. The change of position of a photon, if it follows a linear trajectory, is determined by D = √Nl^2. This assumes the trajectory of the photons is straight and it’s following the Earth’s movement, i.e. the photons are entangled with the Earth. However, at the next 240 seconds the Earth gets a new position and finds the stream of photons which were already emitted from the surface of the Sun, so the time is reduced to one half because those photons had been released from the solar surface 8 minutes before the Earth reached its new position.
I apologize for the delayed answer; I have six days waiting for the technician comes to fix the problem with my conection. As a good friend of mine from England said, Mexico is the land of “tomorrow”.

a jones (21:02:03) :
Of course the speed of light, which is a bit less then the speed of light, is enormous compared to the speeds of motion of the heavenly bodies.
Perhaps you meant “the speed of a photon is a bit less than the speed of light in vacuum”? We can express it also as “the speed of light is a bit less than c”

LS
OK I misunderstood you the first time. Let me see if I have now understood you correctly. So:
1] That the variation of TSI due to variation in solar output is too small to measure.
2. By [1] above I presume you mean the variation in solar output over the very short time that it takes for light from the sun to reach the earth: since I imagine you do observe measure variations of TSI due to solar activity over much longer times such as years.
3] That there is a very much larger variation in TSI observed from the earth due the elliptical orbit of the earth: and the consequent change in the distance between the earth and the sun.
4] That any change in distance between the earth and the sun due to orbit of the earth also changes the time it takes, albeit by a small amount, for the light from the sun to reach the earth.
5] That the degree of precision of your methods of measuring TSI are so high that this difference in time becomes a problem.
6] Which means you cannot use a simple back plot as I suggested but need to take account of both the change in distance and in the time taken for the light to reach the earth at the different positions in the earth’s orbit: even though these positions are very close together.
7] I assume from your original comments that you are using a simple numerical computer based approximation to do this: but are not entirely happy with it.
I am sorry to be so pedantic but if you don’t understand the problem you can’t find an answer. So please correct me if the above is wrong.
NN.
No I meant that the group velocity of light is necessarily always less than the phase velocity.
Ever since I first came aross be Broglie and the duality of nature at age sixteen I was entranced and remain his number one fan.
The idea that a wave might be a particle or conversely a particle a wave appealed to a much younger me and indeed although today in an age of particles and powerful computers and their numerical analyses it is largely viewed as a fascinating anachronism, it is also very useful: especially in some of the odder corners of physics.
I may be long retired but I try to keep my hand in.
Mind when I did my first degree examiners were fond of adding a comic question to the paper to add a little levity to the proceedings.
In physics back then it was often the musical ornithologist proceeding on his bicyle at X feet per second observing a cuckoo some distance away which cucked, if that is the right word, in as I recall in the ratio of a lower third, which was specified for those of us unmusical folk. Some event, in my case a small nuclear explosion nearby, changed the air temperature and caused the next cuck to be reversed into the ratio of an upper third. Please calculate etc.
But around then the Institute of Chemists bowled a googly by asking candidates to work out the wavelength of a cricket ball of such a weight and at such a speed etc.
By the way these questions carried full marks but were subtler than they appeared since beside calculation they often included something which could not be calculated without explaining that it could not, so the candidate was expected to spot the fallacy without prompting, and say so: as well as providing any other observations that might occur.
All a very long time ago before pocket calculators. Oh how I miss my slipstick.
Kindest Regards

a jones (11:46:46) :7] I assume from your original comments that you are using a simple numerical computer based approximation to do this: but are not entirely happy with it.
I am sorry to be so pedantic but if you don’t understand the problem you can’t find an answer. So please correct me if the above is wrong.
All of the above are a correct interpretation, with the possible exception of [7]. we use the highest precision, most exhaustive, most sophisticated, etc means available for this. You have to when working at the ppm level. The process is described here: http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-SORCE%20Friday%20Effect.pdf which also shows what happens when one does not strive for the utmost precision ALL THE TIME. There is no Friday effect, of course. It is the result of ‘simple analysis’, so the first part just just that you cannot back down from complete rigor. The second part describes some of the problems touched upon in my posts here. And I’m not happy with my lack of understanding of this.
In the end, after understanding has been achieved, one can revert to ‘slipstick’ calculations, because one now knows what is important and what is fluff and can make simple back-of-the-envelope calculations again [this is what understanding brings: being able to extract the essence and successfully ignore everything else and knowing why]

LS
Quite so.
Well at the moment I don’t understand it either.
But we have a start.
I have downloaded the paper on the Friday Effect and skimmed it.
In the next few days I will go over it carefully and if anything occurs to me I will advise.
Kindest Regards

a jones (11:46:46):
No I meant that the group velocity of light is necessarily always less than the phase velocity.
Which is the same as to say the velocity of photons (wave group) is less than the speed of light (wave phase). This could account for age of photons, i.e that photons get older and weaker through time or when they vanish at any boundary. Am I misinterpreting your assertion?
Slipsticks pushed us to reason thoroughly on the problems… Computers don’t. 🙂

a jones (13:27:54) :I have downloaded the paper on the Friday Effect and skimmed it.
The effects are observable, especially if one makes Chree-analyses to beat down the noise, but the paper has more to do with the calculation of the distance. I you the JPL Horizon ephemeris and they [LASP] use the VSOP coefficients. At the level of precision sought, it shouldn’t make any difference which one is used. But it does. BTW, as part of my discussion with them they detected a couple of minor errors [relativistic corrections as the photons climb out of the Sun’s gravity well] which they have fixed [they went to a new version of the processing software and reprocessed all the data]. This subject is complicated and most people [including me!] don’t really want to know all the details [except when something doesn’t look right 🙂 ].

Nasif Nahle (13:52:23) :Leif… Isn’t the radial speed of Earth constant?
Heaven’s no. If it were we would either be swallowed up in the Sun already or out in the cold empty universe with no sun to warm us.
For once, the speed changes sign twice a year. From Jan, to July the velocity is away from the Sun, then it turns around and from July to next Jan. it is towards the Sun.

LS
Don’t believe in giving the lad a simple job do you? a relativistic correction for photons climbing out of the gravity well eh?
What fun: but obviously I am going to have to do rather more than I anticipated so we will probably have to bat this to and fro several times as I get a grip on the problem that makes you so uneasy in your mind.
As aforesaid I will start with above paper, do some digging, and then come back.
NN
Of course you can regard light as a stream of photons that is the beauty of the duality of nature. And its great strength is that you can attack the problem from two directions: so if the right one don’t get you the left one will. With a bit of luck.
You are quite right that we have not yet learned to use computing power to its best advantage, though I expect we will. So much data, so much processing power, so many solutions which can be tweaked at the touch of a button. We lose sight of the woods, in the US I think they say forest, for the trees.
And all too often come to believe in the computer output rather than the real observed world. AGW is a classic example of this: but there are many others.
Likewise the mathematical methods we borrow from our friends can as easily conceal answers as provide them. Vector mathematics may be beautifully simple but because it depends on the arrow of time it also hides from us alternative solutions which can be found in the classical solution of the Maxwell equations.
Is this important? I don’t know but I have spent a lifetime in my spare time struggling with it without much success. Because you see the arrow of time is the embodiment of the second law of thermodynamics yet quantum mechanics knows nothing of it: unless of course the reason a particle can suddenly appear and disappear is that it can only exist if it has time to exist in and possibly thats it’s lifetime depends upon its mass as well.
Certainly we now know that this the case with black holes, they do obey the second law and therefore have a lifetime. Note this is essentially a classical solution that depends on the fact that the universe is itself a naked singularity so that no other naked singularity can exist within it.
The concept of difficulties with the arrow of time which I have puzzled over all my life, except when doing physics and engineering to put food on the table. are not popular. Instead we have dark matter, strings, which i think can be undone in a minute, branes etc. not to mention numerous dimensions.
Me I think that the answer lies in the nature of time itself and that whilst the Einstein/ Lorenz view is perfectly correct it is a special case of the more general case. But I must admit if there is a more general case I have not discovered it yet. But as with the case of black holes above I hope we are making progress.
Kindest Regards

Leif Svalgaard (14:28:22) :For once, the speed changes sign twice a year. From Jan, to July the velocity is away from the Sun, then it turns around and from July to next Jan. it is towards the Sun.
Yes, but my question was in the sense of the velocity of scape isn’t the same than the velocity towards the Sun?

This is what I am claiming about those warmist:
Appeal to Belief is a fallacy that has this general pattern:
Most people believe that a claim, X, is true.
Therefore X is true.
This line of “reasoning” is fallacious because the fact that many people believe a claim does not, in general, serve as evidence that the claim is true.
There are, however, some cases when the fact that many people accept a claim as true is an indication that it is true. For example, while you are visiting Maine, you are told by several people that they believe that people older than 16 need to buy a fishing license in order to fish. Barring reasons to doubt these people, their statements give you reason to believe that anyone over 16 will need to buy a fishing license.
There are also cases in which what people believe actually determines the truth of a claim. For example, the truth of claims about manners and proper behavior might simply depend on what people believe to be good manners and proper behavior. Another example is the case of community standards, which are often taken to be the standards that most people accept. In some cases, what violates certain community standards is taken to be obscene. In such cases, for the claim “x is obscene” to be true is for most people in that community to believe that x is obscene. In such cases it is still prudent to question the justification of the individual beliefs.

….and the current titleholder Steig bolts from his corner, launching a massive shot to the body of the challenger Ryan O. Yet the effort caused Steig to drop his left slightly, and the challenger responds with a lighting right cross flush on Steig’s jaw, staggering the champ…..

The crowd is on its feet, the roar is deafening.
Suddenly, Steig backs away, begins to untie his boxing gloves, then pulls them off. The gloves drop to the floor of the ring. Just as suddenly, you can hear a pin drop in the cavernous arena.
Steig says, “I’m not at all interested in debating you — I’ve got much better things to do. Let me be very clear, though, that I’m by no means claiming our results are the last word, and can’t be improved upon. If you have something coherent and useful to say, say it in a peer reviewed paper. If your results improve upon ours, great, that will be a useful contribution.”
A cascade of boos descends upon the ring, along with some rotten fruit, which Steig ducks to avoid. He slips through the ropes at ringside, hops down and trots quickly out of the arena.
His gloves remain in the ring, a target for the crowd’s growing fury.

Hopefully I’m not too off topic here as I hope people will see this one.
The latest BBC story on the Antarctic is at: (Sorry – I posted this URL on a recent WUWT article but was snipped (OT). In the interim my internet has cratered and I can’t get back on the BBC news site so you’ll have to look for yourselves. It was a ludicrous article and I’m sure that others will post it.)
In a nutshell, they say that the Antarctic has been covered in ice for 14 million years but unless we cut CO2 emmisions the sea level will rise and that:
“in around 1,000 years they [sea levels] will approach the same levels that existed “before there was persistent ice sheet in Antarctica”.
In addition the BBC states that:
“The worrying thing is that we seem to be going back to carbon dioxide concentrations consistent with there being a lot less ice around.”

barry (23:07:56) :
Who gives a hoot if the “peers” finally allow publication of a paper, when the political buzzer will have long since sounded at that point.
Steig appears to be running out the clock, along with the “team” at RC. Time is the key factor now as regards the policies of AGW being implemented.
Check out Jeff Id’s repeated ignored pleas with RC for the Steig et al code/data on the comment thread of ‘Politeness Part Deux’ thread at the Air Vent:
‘Jeff Id said
June 2, 2009 at 2:22 pm
Here’s a copy of my initial correspondence with RC.
I wonder if you know when the data and code for this will be released. If it has, where can I find it?
It doesn’t matter to me if the antarctic is warming or not, but I would like to know the details of this study. I’ve read the paper and SI and it isn’t exactly chock full of detail.
(Cut from moderation. I tried again.)
If you wouldn’t mind encouraging your colleagues to publish the data and code used, the review process may gain you considerable support.
I for one wouldn’t be surprised to find the Antarctic was warming, but I need to see the calculations used in order to trust the result. If it looks reasonable, there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s exactly what my blog will say.
(Cut again.
Undeterred I tried again.)
gavin,
After having so many reasonable comments cut I need to add something.
You may find working with me instead of actively suppressing my questions to be less troublesome, my blog is more popular every day.
All I really want to do is understand, Mann08 deserved every criticism I leveled at it (and more), you couldn’t force me to put my name on it. It’s rather unfortunate that it was the first climate paper from which I looked at the data, I understand now that despite the high profile of Mann, most papers are better quality but how am I supposed to react to a high profile climate paper like that?
This is a different paper and a different problem. As I have attempted to say, it has every potential for being accurate. Let it out in the light and let’s see.
I realize this will also be cut, but consider my words I do honor them.
Eventually part of a comment was let through in edited form on RC – requesting code and DATA.
[Response: What is there about the sentence, “The code, all of it, exactly as we used it, is right here,” that you don’t understand? Or are you asking for a step-by-step guide to Matlab? If so, you’re certainly welcome to enroll in one of my classes at the University of Washington.–eric] ‘
They don’t WANT their papers replicated because they know there’s 10 minutes to go in the fourth quarter (sorry, another tortured sports metaphor), they have the ball and all they need to do is run out the clock. They have no interest in the arcane concept of objective, replicated science at this point.
Steig shut down the thread after 42 comments. The previous fisherman etc etc thread ran for over 1000 comments, still open.
As long as there’s no sunshine on their claims, they can afford to be polite and dabble in “substance” while demanding review by “peers” — at the same time taking potshots on the web.
RC has been billowing smoke for how long and still they claim there’s no fire?
IMHO, RCs duplicity is well worthy of being the target of rotten fruit — and much worse.

I attempted to post a polite and on-topic comment praising Ryan O’s work. It never made it past the moderators. In fact, despite being careful to be polite and germain in all cases, I’ve never had a post on any topic make it past the moderators at RC. It seems the only posts that will pass their moderators must be pro-AGW, ad homenin attacks on skeptics, or any post that gives the moderators an opportunity to portray a skeptic commentor as a fool. I have yet to see RC allow an informed debate on any foundational premis of AGW.
RC trumpets that there is no longer any debate on AGW. To be more accurate, there is no tolerance by the moderators for discenting views and therefore the appearance of no debate. It beggs the question why is is so necessary to protect the AGW hypothesis from reasonable inquiry? For intellectual honesty, I give RC an “F”.

“Overall, Antarctica has warmed from 1957-2006. There is no debating that point. (However, other than the Peninsula, the warming is not statistically significant. ) ”
That is the problem with climatology. If something is not statistically significant, then there is no sense in discussing it. If the errors of the temperature measurement are bigger than the “warming”, then there is no reason to speak of a “warming” at all. That’s not science, that’s ideology.
Regarding climate chance. As a chemist I wonder about all the little bits of information I can read about climate phenomena, that are poorly understood. Two days ago there was a news story about glaciers in south america, that contrary to expectation of all the climate catastrophe proponents, do not melt but grow instead. I remember that I can read this type of article every two weeks, either something about chemical composition of aerosols, poorly understood and “misbehaving” in conventional climate models, or about this and that, always “unexpected” stuff and poorly understood by the climate change community.
In my opinion these plethora of tiny bits are the best example that you guys do not understand anything at all of your business! Don’t you think that some caution would be indicated, before you send out your research results in the style of a roman catholic dogma?

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